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… - Oscar Niemeyer

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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. The buildings do appear on paper the way you say, but they are not the result of gratuitous brushstrokes. The pencil is guided by so many thoughts stored away in my mental library. But, 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. There it is. There is nothing more to say.

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About Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15 December 1907 – 5 December 2012) was a Brazilian architect of the international modernist school best known for designing civic buildings in Brasília, a planned city which became the capital of Brazil in 1960, and (in collaboration with others) the New York headquarters of the United Nations.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida de Niemeyer Soares Filho
Alternative Names: Oscar Niemeyer Soares Ribeiro de Almeida Soares Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho Oscard Niemeyer Filho, Oscar Niemeyer Soares Oskar Nimeĭer Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho
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Additional quotes by Oscar Niemeyer

First were the thick stone walls, the arches, then the domes and vaults — of the architect, searching out for wider spaces.
Now it is concrete-reinforced that gives our imagination flight with its soaring spans and uncommon cantilevers. Concrete, to which architecture is integrated, through which it is able to discard the foregone conclusions of rationalism, with its monotony and repetitious solutions.
A concern for beauty, a zest for fantasy, and an ever-present element of surprise bear witness that today's architecture is not a minor craft bound to straight-edge rules, but an architecture imbued with technology: light, creative and unfettered, seeking out its architectural scene.

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