In memoriam: Oscar Niemeyer died yesterday.

Image and quote extracted from :http://www.escapeintolife.com/essays/oscar-niemeyer-architect-of-the-people/

Architecture was my way of expressing my ideals: to be simple, to create a world equal to everyone, to look at people with optimism, that everyone has a gift. I don’t want anything but general happiness. Why is that bad?

- Oscar Niemeyer

"Right angles don't attract me. Nor straight, hard and inflexible lines created by man," he wrote in his 1998 memoir "The Curves of Time."

 ''What attracts me are free and sensual curves. The curves we find in mountains, in the waves of the sea, in the body of the woman we love."

Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho was born on Dec. 15, 1907, in Rio de Janeiro, and earned his architecture degree at Rio's School of Fine Arts.He won the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architecture in 1970, the Pritzker Architecture Prize from Chicago's Hyatt Foundation in 1988 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1998.He died on Wednesday,5th. He was 104 to only ten days to be 105 years old.

In 1956, Oscar Niemeyer was appointed by the president to be the principal architect of Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil. The project included many government buildings and the Cathedral of Brasilia, the latter being a relatively small but startlingly innovative structure of 16 hyperboloid concrete sections. The interior is flooded with light from the full height windows, decorated with flowing, abstract shapes.

Niemeyer went on to create more than 600 buildings around the world. 

His latest work - the Oscar Niemeyer cultural centre in Aviles in northern Spain - also opened on Wednesday 15th on December of 2010, Niemeyer 103´s birthday.

The authorities in Aviles hoped the centre will revive the city's fortunes in the same way the Gugenheim museum helped transform the city of Bilbao from a declining industrial city into a cultural capital.

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.

Photos of Niemeyer Cultural Centre in Aviles courtesy by Iratxe Esteve.

Interior of the Cathedral of Brazilia