Hasta La Ideas

A very happy birthday to Oscar Niemeyer, who today turns 104. While the legendary architect has recently witnessed a serious misstep with his cultural center in Spain, which is set to close today, he’s had a red letter year, between the release of a new book and his appearance in the documentary Urbanized, to name just a few. Niemeyer tells the Times in South Africa that he still has no intentions of retiring and has recently been working on a 2,500 person theater on Rio’s Sugerloaf Mountain. Here’s more from the paper about what he’s been up to:

“I came up with a solution that is capable of prompting surprise and attracting the public: a magnificent dome which would be built before the Sugarloaf Mountain,” he recently wrote.

Among other projects, Niemeyer continues to publish the magazine Nosso Caminho (Our Way), which deals with politics, philosophy and architecture. He publishes it along with his second wife Vera Lucia, 66.

Also Thursday, the new headquarters of Brazil’s election authority, based on a project by Niemeyer, are set to be inaugurated in Brasilia. The futuristic semicircular building cost around 175 million dollars, and it is part of Niemeyer’s design for the Brazilian capital.

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