Architects Plan Drawers

The futuristic capital city that the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer planned and developed is Brasília, Brazil. Nowhere would Niemeyer demonstrate his love of curvature more expressively and elegantly than in his designs for the principal buildings of the city, a project begun in 1956. The dramatic Congressional Palace features two stark towers flanked by a domed structure and a bowl-shaped edifice for the upper and lower legislative houses. He placed the Palácio da Alvorada (the presidential residence) on a small peninsula jutting into a lake so that the sequence of parabolic columns on its façade casts a mirror image on the water. Niemeyer’s grandest achievement was the city’s cathedral, a stunning composition of 16 arched vertical supports with tinted-glass interstices. Four years after Brasília was completed, in 1960, Brazil’s elected government was overthrown in a military coup. Niemeyer, a member of the Communist Party, was harassed continually by the junta. He left the country and did not return until democracy was restored in 1985. Shop a collection of Oscar Niemeyer furniture on 1stDibs.