Monday, January 23, 2012

WHO: Oscar Niemeyer, Age 104, Member of the board of architects for the United Nations



“The remarkable interior space of the 75-ft.-high North Lobby is impaired by a conflict of many vacillating, unrelated ideas.  Among these disparate elements are the functional rationalism of an uncovered structural ceiling, the romanticism of curved, flying balconies reached by a geometric ramp supported on a self-consciously exposed arched steel beam, and a theatrically decorative facing wall with vertical panels of photo-sensitive patterned glass and gilded air-conditioning ducts.  The completed group of buildings, however, does succeed in suggesting one of the most important potentials of modern architecture: the effective juxtaposition of abstract, three-dimensional forms – here a horizontal, organic shape and a geometric, vertical slab – in a composition of unique dramatic contrast.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.
Image courtesy un.org.

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