Oscar Niemeyer (1907 - 2012)

Oscar Niemeyer's Centro Cultural Oscar Niemeyer, Golania, Brazil, which won Best Public Space in the 2007 Wallpaper* Design Awards.

(Image credit: Leonardo Finotti)

By Ellie Stathaki

last updated 28 October 2022

A sad farewell to iconic Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who passed away in Rio de Janeiro yesterday just a few days before his 105th birthday, leaving a rich and unique architectural legacy in his home country and around the world.

We met with the design legend during our Born in Brazil adventure two years ago and looked with admiration at his seminal projects in Brasilia, where he masterminded landmark governmental, residential and cultural buildings, such as the Cathedral of Brasilia, the country's National Congress and the National Theatre.

Brasilia in pictures: 50 great buildings, 50 years

His work, such as the Ravello auditorium in Italy, his prefabricated schools across Brazil, his complex at Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo and his Cultural Centre at Goiania - awarded Best Public Building in the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2007 - was immensely influential on the global architecture scene, defined 20th century Brazilian architecture, and frequently graced the pages of wallpaper*. Niemeyer was the last of the great Modernists and he will always be cited among the last century's most important architects.

28 Page book of wallpaper oscar 1907-2012 — To celebrate the life and legacy of Niemeyer, Wallpaper* has produced a 28-page tribute to the architect to go with our February issue. Buy a copy of our February issue (opens in new tab) or download the iPad edition (opens in new tab) to see more

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture Editor at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018) and Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020).