Architect Oscar Niemeyer, Who Designed Brazil's Capital, Dies

Architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1960

Frank Scherschel/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1960

Frank Scherschel/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Architect Oscar Niemeyer, who designed Brazil's capital and is known for some of the world's most famous modernist buildings, has died. He was 104.

The cause was a respiratory infection, said a spokeswoman for the hospital in Rio de Janeiro where he died. He'd been hospitalized for several weeks with kidney problems, pneumonia and dehydration.

Here's more from The Associated Press:

"In works from Brasilia's crown-shaped cathedral to the undulating French Communist Party building in Paris, Niemeyer shunned the steel-box structures of many modernist architects, finding inspiration in nature's crescents and spirals. His hallmarks include much of the United Nations complex in New York and the Museum of Modern Art in Niteroi, which is perched like a flying saucer across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro."

In an interview with NPR in 2010, he recalled what it was like in 1956, when Brasilia was on the drawing board.

"Niemeyer says he went with President Juscelino Kubitschek to Brazil's vast, dry savanna, the so-called Cerrado region, where Brasilia is now located, and thought it was too far away, too empty.

"But Kubitschek, Niemeyer recalls, wanted to build no matter what.

"And so in four years, Brasilia was built from scratch, with Niemeyer designing its audacious buildings: the Brazilian foreign ministry with its slender arches rising from reflecting pools; the Cathedral of Brasilia, shaped like a giant orchid; the National Congress, with its two bowl-like structures, one up-turned, the other dome-like.

"These and others are all considered modernist masterpieces that capture the meaning of Brasilia: a new city, unburdened by history.

"'We wanted to do it differently' in Brasilia, Niemeyer says. 'Architecture is invention.'

"He didn't just want buildings that worked, but to create a different kind of architecture."

Brasilia's Cathedral was inaugurated in 1960.

Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images Brasilia's Cathedral was inaugurated in 1960.

Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

Niemeyer, who began his career in the 1930s, was known for a distinctive style marked by sweeping curves, which he once famously said were inspired by Brazilian women.

"When you have a large space to conquer, the curve is the natural solution," he said. "I once wrote a poem about the curve. The curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean and on the body of the beloved woman."

The lifelong communist won the Pritzker Prize, his profession's top honor, in 1988.

Here's more about the early part of his career from the BBC:

"After graduating in the mid-1930s, he joined a Rio architectural firm run by a man who would become one of his great collaborators, Lucio Costa.

"Having won wide praise for a number of buildings in Brazil, he was chosen in the early 1950s to be part of an international team given the task of designing the UN buildings in New York.

"It was led by the great Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier, who was 20 years older than Niemeyer."

Niemeyer was working until the end. His most recent projects include a culture center for Aviles, Spain. A slideshow of some of his work can be seen here.

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A Look At Brazil's Big Dreamer, Architect Oscar Niemeyer

Hide caption One of Oscar Niemeyer's earliest projects, built in the early 1940s, came to be known as the "Pampulha architectural complex." It was commissioned by Juscelino Kubitschek, who would later become president of Brazil. At the time, he was mayor of Belo Horizonte. The complex included a church, which was initially refused for consecration by the Roman Catholic Church. Hide caption By the late 1950s, Kubitschek was president of Brazil, and he invited Niemeyer to design many of the civic buildings in the country's new capital of Brasilia, including the Palacio da Alvorada, the official residence of Brazilian presidents, pictured here in 2006. Hide caption A church, pictured circa 1955 on the grounds of the presidential palace, is connected to the palace by an underground hallway. Hide caption The Oscar Niemeyer Museum, inaugurated in 2002, the largest museum in Latin America, is in Curitiba, the capital of the state of Parana, Brazil. Curitiba, considered an outstanding example of urban planning worldwide and the ecological capital of Brazil, was chosen as one of the 12 host cities for the 2014 soccer World Cup. Hide caption Brasilia Cathedral was inaugurated by President Juscelino Kubitschek in 1960. Hide caption Brasilia's National Museum, inaugurated in 1960. Hide caption Construction for the headquarters of the French Communist Party began in the late 1960s. Hide caption "The Volcano" at Le Havre Cultural Center, France, built in 1982. Hide caption The Niteroi Museum of Contemporary Art near Rio de Janeiro, built in 1991. Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images Hide caption Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Center of Asturias, Spain, built in 2006. Hide caption Auditorium Oscar Niemeyer in Ravello, Italy, on the day of its inauguration. Roberto Salomone/AFP/Getty Images Hide caption A pianist at Auditorium Oscar Niemeyer in Ravello on the day of its official inauguration in 2009, with Italy's Amalfi coast in the background. Roberto Salomone/AFP/Getty Images Hide caption The inauguration of the Oscar Niemeyer foundation building in Niteroi, Brazil, 2010. Hide caption Part of Niemeyer's foundation building in Niteroi, Brazil, 2010.

There are a number of ways to leave a legacy. Some people have kids. Some become president. Or you can build unforgettable buildings that define the landscape.

Throughout his 104 years, architect Oscar Niemeyer defied the rules and even cheated death for a long while, working well into his last years. He died Wednesday of a respiratory infection and received a fitting tribute in this obituary in The New York Times.

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer looks at drawings for a project of two cities in Senegal, Africa, in his office in Rio de Janeiro, 1992.

Antonio Scorza/AFP/Getty Images

Design was in Niemeyer's blood. He was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1907 to a graphic artist, his father.

After working with the legendary Swiss architect Le Corbusier, the commissions flowed.

Niemeyer's biggest task, starting in 1956, was effectively to design Brasilia from the ground up when it was chosen as Brazil's new capital in the country's interior. He was the chief architect responsible for many public buildings — a unique opportunity to determine the look and feel of an entire city in just a few years.

He broke all of the molds, lived and breathed outside the proverbial box and eschewed the expectations he had inherited. Politically, he was aligned with the far left, which complicated his career at times, especially during years of military dictatorship in Brazil and during the Cold War.

Philosophically, Niemeyer defied the axiom of contemporary modernists that "form follows function."

As Niemeyer put it: "Form follows beauty."

In a 2005 interview in the New York Times Magazine, Niemeyer said, "The ultimate task of the architect is to dream. Otherwise nothing happens."

And in Niemeyer's dreams, beauty was found in curved lines. Creativity flows from bending the straight lines of authority. Those ideas, in addition to his buildings and sculptures, are Niemeyer's legacy.

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