Ecstasy

I have always confronted life as an unwavering rebel.

After reading Sartre, I viewed life as an unfair and unrelenting tragedy. When I was a young man of only fifteen, I was anguished to think of man’s destiny, doomed as we are to total abandonment, and defenseless against it. I was frightened by the idea of someday disappearing forever. Like everyone else, I have tried to erase such thoughts and instead take advantage of the pleasures of this brief and joyful passage on earth that fate grants us without our consultation. I have felt the ecstasy of the fantastic natural world around us, and, arm-in-arm with my friends, I cast aside the disturbing thoughts that so afflicted me when I was alone.

I wore a mask of youthful optimism and contagious good humor. I was known as a high-spirited and spontaneous personality, a lover of the Bohemian lifestyle, while deep inside I nursed a tremendous sorrow when I thought about humanity and life.

by Oscar Niemeyer

Le Corbusier

I learned a lot from my contact with le Corbusier and from reading his theories. The only direct influence I had from him, however, was on the day that he told me architecture is universal. Then I started my architecture.

I worked with him; helped him on some projects. The main influence I got from him was when he told me that architecture is a mental invention, a free creation of the mind.

by Oscar Niemeyer

Free-flowing, Sensual Curves

I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line—hard and inflexible—created by man.

I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves.

In architecture, as in any work of art, the most important thing is astonishment.

It is for a person to look and see that it is something different.

Architecture is all about curiosity.

Architecture is invention.

It must offer pleasure as well as practicality.

If you only worry about function, the result stinks.

by Oscar Niemeyer

What’s Still Left to be Done

Architecture for me has always begun with drawing. When I was very little my mother said I used to draw in the air with my fingers. I needed a pencil. Once I could hold one, I have drawn every day since.

When I have looked at the site for a building, considered its budget and thought of how it might be built, and what it might be, the drawings come very quickly.

I pick up my pen.

It flows.

A building appears.

I think that I entered school because I liked to draw. And drawing brought me to architecture.

I had my own ideas. I wanted a smoother architecture with more freedom, and that is what I did and still do. I think that in the end, intuition always prevails in architecture and art. The important thing is to want to do something.

by Oscar Niemeyer