Hasta La Ideas

Fresh off his turn as a songwriter, legendary architect Oscar Niemeyer celebrated his 103rd birthday this week and received perhaps his best present yet: the opening of the Oscar Niemeyer Foundation just outside his home city of Rio de Janeiro. As reported by the BBC, the new institution will feature a large collection of the architect’s drawings and models from his incredibly lengthy 70+ years in the business. Though certainly the most recent, this isn’t the first location dedicated to honoring the architect. The first, the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, opened in 2002 in Curitiba, Brazil, and just this year the Centro Cultural Internacional Oscar Niemeyer started wrapping up construction in Aviles, Spain. In celebration of his birthday, the latter also used the day for an opening of their own: allowing public access to its newly finished main dome (which, of course, Niemeyer designed). Here’s a bit about the new Foundation:

“My friends have come to see me, how nice,” Mr Niemeyer told reporters at the inauguration of his foundation in the city of Niteroi, outside Rio de Janeiro.

Designed by Mr Niemeyer himself, the museum building boasts the sensuous concrete curves that define his distinctive modernist style and have made him one of the world’s most famous architects.

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