The following is a list of some of the best known works by Brazil's star architect Oscar Niemeyer, a creative genius who died Wednesday at the age of 104, after designing more than 600 projects during career that spanned seven decades.
View of the Brazilian Congress in Brasilia ©AFP PHOTO/Evaristo SA
The Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, in Pampulha, a suburb of the southeastern Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. The church was built in 1943 as part of a complex that includes a casino, a dance hall and restaurant, a yacht club, and a golf club distributed around an artificial lake.
The church was Niemeyer's first major project and "one of his favorite."
Sao Paulo's iconic Copan Building, one of the largest edifices in Brazil erected for the city's 400th anniversary.
The 140-meter (460-foot), 38-story residential building, with its sinuous facade, was constructed between 1957 and 1966. The concrete structure has some 1160 apartments and 5000 residents.
The ramp of Brasilia's National Museum, work of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, inaugurated in 2007 ©AFP /Evaristo SA
Brasilia: an ultra-modern city built in 1956, what at the time was the middle of nowhere. Lucio Costa was the project's main urban planner and Niemeyer was the main architect. On April 21 of 1960, it formally became Brazil's federal capital. Niemeyer designed the city's futuristic buildings such as the Planalto Palace (seat of government), the Cathedral and the National Congress.
The United Nations headquarters in New York completed in 1952. Niemeyer teamed up with French-Swiss architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known by his pseudonym of Le Corbusier for the project.
The headquarters of the French Communist Party (1967-1981) in Paris. That edifice, with an enormous undulating facade reminiscent of the Copan building, was designed during a period of exile in France, where the architect -- a lifelong Communist -- fled in the 1960s when a military dictatorship seized power in Brazil.
In France, he also designed a cultural center (1972-1983) in the northern port city of le Havre.
The headquarters of the Mondadori Group inaugurated in Milan 1975. Built beside a large artificial lake, the site has tall arches of varying widths and two low-rise structures that appear to emerge out of a central building.
The Civic center of Algiers (1968). He also designed a futuristic mosque for the Algerian capital which was never built.
The Sambadrome, the "Temple of Samba" he designed in 1984 as a parade ground for the famed Rio Carnival. Early this year, Niemeyer supervised the renovation of the complex in preparation of the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The Contemporary Art Museum in Niteroi, a city near Rio.
Designed in 1996 by the building design master when he was already 89 years old, the white edifice includes an upturned dish shape poised over the ocean on rocky cliffs. It houses designs, drawings, models and other architecture artifacts from Niemeyer's 70-year career.
The dazzling Niemeyer Cultural Center in the northern Spanish industrial city of Aviles. Inaugurated in May 2011, the complex boasts sensuous concrete curves and a dome that juts out onto the esplanade of the center.
Other Niemeyer works can also be found in countries as diverse as Abu Dhabi, Israel, Paraguay, the United States and Cuba, whose retired leader Fidel Castro was one of his personal friends.
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Writer: AFP Relax NewsPosition: News agency
Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2012/12/06/niemeyer-key-works-of-a-brazilian-icon/
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