An author has a right to be judged by his best book, but does an architect have the right to be judged by his best building?

His Inhuman Elegance

THEODORE DALRYMPLE

Oscar Niemeyer, R.I.P.

Can an architect design a beautiful building by luck or accident, and if he does so, is it enough to redeem his life’s work? 

There is no doubt that Oscar Niemeyer, who has died at the venerable age of 104, built several beautiful buildings, the best of them (of all that I know) the Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia, the seat of the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations. 

It was not his fault that his original conception, which included the palace’s setting, was comprehensively ruined by the addition of a banal office block behind it, built to accommodate additional bureaucrats. 

And to mold concrete into beautiful forms, as Niemeyer did in this building, depriving it of its usual inhuman quality, took imagination and ability. Indeed, it is a feat that I’ve not seen equaled or even approached elsewhere.

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