Oscar Niemeyer: invenzione, forma, struttura

This text highlights the relationship between form and structure in Niemeyer’s work, but even before it highlights its multi-faceted personality: architect, urban planner, writer, poet, artist, sculptor, industrial designer, political activist – and, most importantly, a man and a citizen who cared and deeply felt for a tormented and pained humanity. The formal innovation Niemeyer invariably pursued in his work as an implicit goal and a primary reason for architecture, as well as a way to elicit surprise in its users due to its “unexpected” and “unforeseen” quality, was firmly rooted in and inspired by the structural boldness made possible by the huge potential of reinforced concrete. This would become his favorite material as the medium through which he could “gain access to a world of curves” that lent themselves to be “sculpturally” shaped and and therefore also the boundary beyond which technical innovation and therefore also the boundary beyond which technical innovation basically lost interest in his eyes. lost interest in his eyes.