URBAN PLANNING.
To some architects, the greatest challenge is not the individual
structure but urban design. Urban planning is probably as old as
civilization itself (which, we recall, means "city life"). We have
caught only occasional glimpses of it in this book
since its history is difficult to trace by direct visual evidence.
Cities, like living organisms, are ever-changing, and to reconstruct
their pasts from their present appearances is not an easy task. With the
advent of the industrial era two centuries ago, cities began to grow
explosively and have continued to do so ever since. Much of this growth
was uncontrolled, beyond the laying out of a network of streets. Worse,
housing standards were poor or poorly enforced. The unfortunate result
can be seen in the overcrowded, crumbling apartment blocks that are the
blight of huge urban areas. They were taken over by the
poor, while those who could afford it fled to the dormitory towns of
suburbia. This exodus, accelerated by the automobile, has produced the
dangerous tensions that lend urgency to the cry for urban renewal today.
Such renewal, needless to say, must involve the political, social, and
economic resources of an entire society, rather than the architect
alone. Yet the architect has an essential role in the process, that of
translating the schemes of the planning agencies into reality. However,
they have generally failed in their social mandate to replace the slums
of our decaying cities with housing that will provide a socially
healthful environment for very large numbers of people.
NIEMEYER.
Nowhere are the issues facing modern civilization put into
sharper relief than in the grandiose urban projects conceived by
twentieth-century architects. These Utopian visions may be regarded as
laboratory experiments which seek to redefine the role of architecture
in shaping our lives and to pose new solutions. Limited by their very
scope, few of these ambitious proposals make it off the drawing board.
Among the rare exceptions is Brasilia, the inland capital of Brazil
built entirely since 1960.
Presented with an unparalleled opportunity to design a
major city from the ground up and with vast resources at its disposal,
the design team, headed by the Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer (born
1907), achieved undeniably
spectacular results (fig. 1206).
Like most projects of this sort, Brasilia has a massive
scale and insistent logic that make it curiously oppressive, so that
despite the lavish display, the city provides a chilling glimpse of the
future (compare fig. 1178).
1206.
OSCAR NIEMEYER. Brasilia, Brazil. Completed
1960
1206.
OSCAR NIEMEYER. Brasilia, Brazil. Completed
1960
Section and plan of the Congress Building
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Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer, in full Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho (born
Dec. 15, 1907, Rio de Janeiro, Braz.), Brazilian architect
and early exponent of modern architecture in Latin America,
particularly noted for his work on Brasília, the new capital
of Brazil.
Niemeyer studied
architecture at the National School of Fine Arts, Rio de
Janeiro. Shortly before he graduated in 1934, he entered the
office of Lúcio Costa, a leader of the modern movement in
Brazilian architecture. He worked with Costa from 1937 to
1943 on the design for the Ministry of Education and Health
building, considered by many to be Brazil’s first
masterpiece of modern architecture. The design reveals the
influence of the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier,
who was a consultant on the construction. Niemeyer also
worked with Costa on the plans for the Brazilian Pavilion at
the New York World’s Fair of 1939–40.
Niemeyer’s first solo
project was the plan for a complex within Pampulha, a new
suburb of Belo Horizonte, Braz. Commissioned in 1941 by
Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, then mayor of Belo
Horizonte, the scheme included a church, casino, dance hall,
restaurant, yacht club, golf club, and the mayor’s weekend
retreat, all situated around an artificial lake. The
complex’s buildings are notable for their free-flowing
forms. One writer described the facade of the church as
resembling “the trajectory of a bouncing ball.” In 1947
Niemeyer represented Brazil in the planning of the United
Nations buildings in New York City.
When in 1956 Kubitschek was
elected president of Brazil, he asked Niemeyer to design the
new capital city of Brasília. Niemeyer agreed to design the
government buildings but suggested a national competition
for the master plan, a competition subsequently won by his
mentor, Lúcio Costa. Niemeyer served as chief architect for
NOVA-CAP, the government building authority in Brasília,
from 1956 to 1961. Among the Brasília buildings designed by
Niemeyer are the President’s Palace, the Brasília Palace
Hotel, the Ministry of Justice building, the presidential
chapel, and the cathedral. In 1961 Niemeyer returned to
private practice and for a time lived in Paris and Israel.
In 1966 he designed an urban area in Grasse, near Nice,
France, and a building for the French Communist Party in
Paris. From 1968 he lectured at the University of Rio de
Janeiro.
Niemeyer’s other
architectural projects include the Ministry of Defense
building in Brasília in 1968 and Constantine University (now
Mentouri University) in Constantine, Alg., in 1969. In the
mid-1980s he began rethinking and renovating some of his
former designs in Brasília. He changed the shape of the
exterior arches on the Ministry of Justice building and
replaced the windows of the cathedral with stained-glass
panels. He continued to design new buildings, including the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói, Braz., in 1996. Even
after celebrating his 100th birthday and despite criticism
that his newer work lacked the elegance of his earlier
projects, in 2007 he began designing a cultural centre for
Avilés, Spain, where in 1989 he had received the Prince of
Asturias Award for the Arts.
The recipient of many other
international architectural awards, Niemeyer was a cowinner
(with Gordon Bunshaft) of the 1988 Pritzker Prize. In 1963
he received the Lenin Peace Prize. The Oscar Niemeyer
Foundation, dedicated to architectural preservation and
research, was founded in 1988, and a new headquarters
designed by Niemeyer opened in Niterói in 2010.
Encyclopædia
Britannica
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Oscar Niemeyer.
Brasilia: Catedral Metropolitana
Oscar Niemeyer.
Pantheon of Liberation and Democracy Tancredo Neves, Brasilia, 1985-1986
Oscar Niemeyer.
Casino in Funchal, Madeira
Oscar Niemeyer.
Museu de Arte Contemporanea
(MAC), Niteroi
Oscar Niemeyer.
Oscar Niemeyer Museum (NovoMuseu),
Curitiba, Brazil
Oscar Niemeyer.
International Cultural Centre
Asturias, Spain
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