Brazil’s most famous architect, Oscar Niemeyer, celebrated his 102nd birthday on Tuesday in typical fashion: at work on projects rather than pondering his supercentennial age.
“Turning 102 is crap and there is nothing to commemorate,” he said.
Niemeyer, who was born in 1907 in Rio de Janeiro, where he still lives, is famed for designing some of Brazil’s most distinctive buildings, among them Rio’s Sambodrome and the nearby Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum, and many of the futuristic edifices of the capital, Brasilia.
PHOTO: AFP
His inspiration for the domes, curves and sweeping lines that make up his style he has said is “the body of the Brazilian woman.”
Niemeyer has witnessed Brazil’s progression from a chaotic new republic, a 1964-1985 military regime that forced him into exile in Paris, and the increasingly prosperous return to democracy that the country now enjoys.
His conclusion on Tuesday? Brazil is more “egalitarian since a former worker arrived in power,” the former communist said, referring to the former trade union leader and steelworker President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The architect, sitting in his studio overlooking Copacabana beach, said that one project he was managing was the renovation of the central avenue of the Sambodrome, where the most famous of Brazil’s glitz-and-flesh Carnival parades are held.
Another was a Niemeyer Complex planned for Niteroi, the town across Rio’s bay that already proudly hosts many of his buildings.
There is also the Aviles International Cultural Center to be opened in Spain next year.
Even in old age, Niemeyer continues to flaunt his love of life. He still enjoys his cigars — “an old habit that I cultivate with much gusto.”
Four years ago, at age 98 and a widower, he married his 60-year-old secretary.
But nobody lives forever. In September Niemeyer was hospitalized for three weeks to have surgery on his gall bladder and to have a tumor removed from his colon.
“I don’t fear death,” he told the Rio newspaper O Dia this week.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
‘LIMITING MYSELF’: New Zealand’s foreign minister said that the omments by Phil Goff were ‘disappointing’ and made the diplomat’s position in the UK ‘untenable’ New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the UK has lost his job over remarks he made about US President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday. Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, made the comments at an event held by international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday. Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British prime minister Winston
RSS