• English Site
• >Zeitgeist
• >Architecture
• >

  'People Need Beauty': Architect Oscar Niemeyer Turns 100

'People Need Beauty' Architect Oscar Niemeyer Turns 100

By Carmen Stephan in Rio

Part 2: Dreams of Equality

"He controls our lives in a positive way. He sets the right pace. When I was young, he even picked my first wife for me," says Kadu. "I don't believe that he will disappear from life. He will always be present. In 100 years, people will still know who Oscar Niemeyer was."

Who is he? Communism, for Niemeyer, has faded into something of an affectation, like having the stairwells in his buildings painted red. He likes to ignore questions about his capitalist buildings, but he holds fast to his ideals and puts them into practice. He even built a house for his chauffeur in one of the city's poor neighborhoods.

Niemeyer also helped a German architect who arrived in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-1950s and knocked on his door. Hans Müller sits at his window in Botafago and watches the activity on the street outside, the way old people sometimes do. "My wife always says to me, take Oscar as an example, he's 100!" Müller is 78.

When the young Müller first came to Rio, he had brought along a letter from the city of Berlin reminding Niemeyer of his obligation to design a building for the city's Hansaviertel district. When Müller handed over the letter, Niemeyer said: "You need work? Then stay here!"

He took Niemeyer's advice and ended up working for him for almost half a century. When Brazil's dream of equality fell apart and a military government took over, Müller accompanied the master into exile in Europe.

Once in Europe, Niemeyer created his own little Rio, hosting groups of men and spending long nights smoking and playing cards. A poor card player, Niemeyer liked to keep a few extra trump cards in his pocket. Müller tells stories of a wild life in Paris. "We shared everything, and once we even had the same woman. Oscar thinks about women constantly."

Lewd remarks are part of Niemeyer's language. He points to a picture above his desk depicting two vaginas, two breasts and a pair of buttocks, and says: "It must have been fun taking that picture." At the same time, Niemeyer has a fondness for transfiguring women into exalted beings and lyrical objects.

A Niemeyer drawing of nude women dancing adorns the façade of the new theater in Niterói, across the bay from Rio. They symbolize his quest for beauty and surprise. If there could be no political revolution, Niemeyer at least wanted to be revolutionary in his architecture. The poet Ferreira Gullar puts it this way: "It isn't enough to solve people's social problems. They need beauty. Oscar makes life more beautiful."

The art museum in Niterói looks like an elegant spaceship in perfect harmony with its natural surroundings. Like many of Niemeyer's works, the building has become a symbol of the city. Visitors often stand in front of it, so spellbound that they forget to go inside. Niemeyer supposedly sketched the design over lunch at a steakhouse. His art manages to be both unexpected and popular at the same time. The most important aspect of his architecture is not its technical audacity but its soul. He wants people to feel it and experience it.

No One left indifferent

He often creates a curved ramp, a sort of architectural gangway, from which one can observe the building from several different angles before going inside. Even more impressive is the open space Niemeyer integrates into his designs. The space between structures creates a field of tension, which has to be filled -- with thoughts and emotions. This is one of the reasons that no one is left indifferent by Brasília.

Oscar Niemeyer never wanted to live in Brasília. He would have missed Rio's chaos. He is now in the process of developing a new magazine. He never stops adding new elements to his life -- as if doing so could prolong it.

Niemeyer has a specific concept of death. He portrayed it most beautifully in his autobiography, where he describes, on a drive from Rio to Brasília, seeing sensual hips and breasts in cloud formations as they gradually dissipated. "And I felt that this perverse metamorphosis resembles our own fate. We have no choice. We are born, we grow up, we fight, we die and we disappear forever."

Five years ago Niemeyer had the carpeting removed from his office and white tiles installed in its place. When the work was finished, he was satisfied with the result and said: "Now the office is set up for the next 10 years."

He will be 105 at the end of those 10 years.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan