that buildings should pretty much look the same where ever on earth they happen to be. The early figures

of Modernism were united in their bitter opposition to any kind of 'regionalism', which they

saw as reactionary, folkloric and plain mediocre.

The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer began

his career as an orthodox modernist.

He was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1907 – and developed a passion for architecture

in his early teens. As a young man he fell

in with a group that venerated the great European Modernist architects, especially Le Corbusier

– who had insisted with particular vehemence on making sure buildings made no concession

whatever to the culture in which they were located. Niemeyer's professional ambitions

were realised when, in 1936, Le Corbusier came to Rio to design

the new Ministry of Education and Health and Niemeyer got a job on the project.

While working with him, Niemeyer retained the utmost respect

for Le Corbusier, but at the same time, he couldn't help but observe how blind his

guest was to the particularities of Brazilian culture and climate. With what would become

his legendary charm, Niemeyer managed to persuade Le Corbusier to abandon some of his more hard-edged

'universalist' ideas and to start to make some concessions to local conditions.

Under Niemeyer's influence, the building's windows acquired shades against the sun and,

even an enormous traditional

Portuguese piece of tile work, done up with abstract motifs, for the public areas on the

ground floor. Emboldened by his success

Niemeyer felt ready to break free from European Modernism. He is now celebrated for being

the first architect anywhere in the world to practice a regional kind of Modernism:

in his case, a Brazilian-infused modernism. His first wholly original work was completed

in 1943 (when he was 36), the church of Saint Francis of Assisi.

The church had no straight lines

on any plane, for Niemeyer now judged these to be European and in many ways authoritarian.

Niemeyer was henceforth to include curves in all his buildings, and saw them in a nationalistic

light as being particularly Brazilian in nature. He remarked;

“What attracts me is the free and sensual curve—the curve that I find in the mountains of my country,

in the sinuous course of its rivers and in the bodies of beautiful Brazilian women.”

The latter point about women is telling. Niemeyer was deeply responsive to female beauty throughout his

life. He was famous around Rio for his affairs, many with people dramatically younger than

he was. At 92, he acquired a girlfriend who had just turned 25. As in the Ministry of

Health, the Pampulha Church had tiles across it. They reminded viewers that Brazil could

be both modern and yet recall its heritage – that a church might nod towards the forms of a

futuristic airplane hanger, and yet could at the same time accommodate a depiction of

Saint Francis.

Niemeyer's most audacious attempt to use architecture to define Brazilian identity

came with his designs for the new capital, Brasília. In 1956, Kubitschek asked Niemeyer

to help create a wholly planned city in the centre of the country, free from the corruption

of the old capital in Rio. Niemeyer drew up the National Congress, a cathedral, a cultural

complex, many ministries and commercial and residential buildings. The atmosphere was

dignified, hopeful, and in touch with the native environment. Apartment buildings were

lifted on stilts to allow vegetation to grow beneath them, maintaining a connection with

the local ecology and tropical climate. Of course, Niemeyer's works depicted Brazil

not as it was, but as he believed and hoped it might one day be.

Brasilia imagines the Brazil of the future;

it is a glass and reinforced concrete ideal for the country to develop towards. In the

future, so the capitol argues, Brazil will be a place where rationality is powerful;

where order and harmony reign; where elegance and serenity are normal.

Niemeyer was prolific until his very last

years, teaching around the world, writing and designing sculptures and furniture. He

died in 2012, when he was 104 years old. He was given a hero's funeral and thousands

joined the cortege. What his nation was honouring was an architect who had given it a workable

yet ideal portrait of itself. He had enabled Brazil to break free from a sterile European

modernism – and to create buildings that better reflected the nation's uniqueness.

Niemeyer remains an example to all architects who aspire to put up buildings that remember

the distinctiveness of their locations – architects who may like their computers or their phones to be universal

in design, but are as keen for their buildings to be culturally specific.

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