Brazil mourns iconic architect who built Brasilia

AFP/Brasilia Brazil yesterday mourned its iconic architect Oscar Niemeyer, with arrangements under way for a solemn memorial ceremony in Brasilia, the futuristic capital he helped create. “I join the whole of Brazil in mourning him,” ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote yesterday, a day after Niemeyer passed away in Rio at the age of 104. “He left us but will always be among us, present in the lines of buildings he designed in Brazil and around the world.” Tributes poured in from abroad as well, with fellow winners of the Pritzker prize, likened to architecture’s Nobel, remembering Niemeyer as a colossus in his field and his flair for wavy, curvaceous structures as a source of inspiration and creativity. Dressed in his favourite navy blue suit and a blue striped shirt, Niemeyer was embalmed yesterday in Rio. His body was to be flown to Brasilia to be put on view at the Planalto Palace, the presidential office Niemeyer designed, before returning to his native Rio for a private ceremony in the Botafogo district, officials said. A public wake is scheduled for today, hours before the national icon is to be buried in Botafogo. “The monumental Brasilia, where he left the imprint of his art and focused his dreams of a city that would shelter with fondness and comfort rich and poor, ordinary people, will remain the optimal expression of his genius and his generosity,” Lula added. Soon after Niemeyer’s death was announced, President Dilma Rousseff hailed him as “one of Brazil’s geniuses” and a “revolutionary who “always dreamt of a more egalitarian society”. A pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete to produce soaring, curvaceous forms, Niemeyer designed 600 works around the world and had some 20 other projects under way. From Europe, British architect Norman Foster led tributes to Niemeyer, remembering him as an inspiration for himself and a generation of architects and that meeting him - last year in Rio - was like meeting one’s hero. Foster said in a statement that as a student in the 1960s he pored over the plans for each of Niemeyer’s projects and that even as an older man Niemeyer never lost his passion for life, for creating, for discovery. “Fifty years later his work still has the power to startle us,” Foster said. French architect Jean Nouvel, another Pritzker winner, told AFP that Neimeyer “was the last giant of the modernity of the 20th century” along with Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. “If you want to make a comparison with painting, you could say that Le Corbusier was the Picasso and Oscar Niemeyer was the Matisse,” he said. In France, Communist Party leader Pierre Laurent eulogized Niemeyer as “an extraordinary man who was able to ally his creative talent to his commitment to Communism throughout his life.” The architect, whose typically wavy design for the party’s headquarters in Paris is considered one of his outstanding works, spent many years living in France while Brazil was under military rule. Laurent announced that the party headquarters would be opening its doors to the public for several days in order to celebrate Niemeyer’s life. French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti expressed thanks for the 20 plus original buildings the Brazilian icon, a long-time collaborator of Le Corbusier, bequeathed to France. Winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1988, Niemeyer started his career in the 1930s and went on working well into the 21st century, after turning 100. Niemeyer works can be found in countries as far-flung as Algeria, Italy, Israel, the US and Cuba, whose longtime leader Fidel Castro was one of his personal friends. The Cuban communist party newspaper Granma called Niemeyer and unwavering friend of the Cuban revolution and of Castro. It quoted Niemeyer as saying once, “I will never shut my mouth. I will never hide my communist convictions.” In a show of his support for Cuba and opposition to the US embargo against it, when Castro turned 80 in 2006 Niemeyer gave Cuba a sculpture: an open-mouthed monster facing off against a Cuban holding his country’s flag of blue and white stripes with a red triangle enclosing a star. In the 1940s, Niemeyer worked on the New York headquarters of the then-recently-created UN, an initiative which symbolised hopes for a new era of peace after the carnage of World War II. In 1956, he was appointed chief architect on the project to provide Brazil with a modern new capital city in the heart of the jungle - an achievement that was to make him one of the world’s best-known architects. One of his most spectacular works was a contemporary art museum created in 1996 - when Niemeyer was already 89 years old. Located in Niteroi, a town near Rio, it includes an upturned dish shape poised over the ocean on rocky cliffs. Born in Rio into a middle class family of German, Portuguese and Arab ancestry, Niemeyer created some 400 buildings in all, including the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, London, the Penang State Mosque in Malaysia, and the French Communist Party headquarters in Paris. He “captured the essence of Brazil with his architecture. His buildings distilled the colours, light and sensual image of his native country,” the jury that awarded him the Pritzker prize wrote.