Word: kubitscheks
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...country alive with spectacular and imaginative new architecture, the work of Oscar Niemeyer (see color pages) ranks at the top. One day in 1956 Niemeyer went riding with his longtime friend, President Juscelino Kubitschek, who told him his dream of Brasilia and casually added: "I want you to design it." Niemeyer has since turned down a fortune in fees to become the $300-a-month head of the Department of Architecture and Urbanization of Novacap (a coined word meaning "new capital") Last week, with Kubitschek already installed in the nearly finished Palace of the Dawn, Architect Niemeyer moved wife, draftsmen...
Driving Dreamer. He left behind the comfort of a house south of Rio that is itself an architectural showplace, with curves flowing gracefully into the hills above the Atlantic. But in translating Kubitschek's dream into Brasilia's buildings, Niemeyer, once an easygoing bohemian, turned into a single-minded driver. Says he: "Until Brasilia, I regarded architecture as an exercise to be practiced in a sporting spirit and nothing more. Now I live for Brasilia...
...switch even after Hungary, because "we are too old to change." But he insists that he limits his Communist activity to donations to the party, prefers novels (favorite: Jean-Paul Sartre) to Marx, takes little interest in politics, and remains a close friend of anti-Red President Kubitschek...
Niemeyer's first major project of his own was commissioned by the man who was then mayor of Belo Horizonte, Juscelino Kubitschek. The project: Pampulha, a new suburb for Belo Horizonte (pop. 600,000). Says Niemeyer: "Juscelino was a perfect client. He told me what he wanted and gave me complete artistic liberty to carry it out." Projecting Le Corbusier's ideas, Niemeyer combined respect for Brazil's climate, terrain and Latin tempo with his own love for the freeflow form. The curving, tiled lines of the restaurant, the soaring yacht club and casino, the many-arched...
...mile road, Brasilia's first paved ground link to the outside world, was ready for Kubitschek's inaugural ride -and ready to carry tons of cement and steel for buildings yet to come. For Kubitschek, who plans to transfer 8,000 government workers to the new capital by 1960, it was a moment for an oratorical allusion to Brasilia's role as steppingstone to the vast, undeveloped interior of Brazil. The new capital, he said, "is the conquest of all that has been ours only...