Brazilian Curves – Ramon Esteve

Oscar Niemeyer lived to be 104 years old and his long professional career spans from the arrival of modern architecture in America in the 1930s, led by Le Corbusier and Lucio Costa, to the starchitecture of the early 2000s. Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1988, he is without a doubt the best-known architect in Brazil.

The most representative work of Oscar Niemeyer are the buildings he designed for the Three Powers Plaza in Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil planned by Lucio Costa. But his extensive work, around 600 projects throughout his 70-year career, includes many other buildings throughout Brazil, such as his early church in Pampulha or the Niteroi Museum in Sao Paulo, and throughout the world, such as the Headquarters for the French Communist Party in Paris or the Niemeyer Cultural Centre in Avilés.

For me beauty is valued more than anything – the beauty that is manifest in a curved line or in an act of creativity , Oscar Niemeyer.

Starting from the formal paradigms of Le Corbusier‘s work, Niemeyer developed a personal language characterized by an expressive use of structures that pushed the technological possibilities of concrete to the limit and by its recurring curved, sculptural and sensual forms, which Niemeyer related to the landscape of his native Brazil and that earned him the criticism of rationalist architects like Max Bill.

Since the 1970s, Niemeyer developed with his daughter Anna Maria a series of furniture that reinterpreted modern design through his characteristic architectural language and the possibilities of technology taken to the limit, such as the Rio chaise, the Alta lounge chair, or the Marquise bench. Designed to complete the interior of his architecture, these pieces seek to reflect the Brazilian character by being beautiful, comfortable and unselfconscious all at once.