Ravello, off South Italy’s coast, is said to be one of the most beautiful spots on earth. And Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer’s all-white curvaceous auditorium is set amongst its luxuriant rocky hillsides and against the backdrop of the refined Amalfi coastal town’s trademark awe-inspiring brilliant blue sea and endless open skies.

Completion is due in September, ready to showcase the new auditorium’s unique feature: its over-hanging canopied roof (or solaio a sbalzo in Italian). More plainly put, this means that while the amenities are set off the entrance piazza or in the floors below, a section of the 1,500m2 canopy, which contains the actual auditorium space, literally and strikingly, hangs in the air supported by nothing.

About Oscar Niemeyer:

Oscar Niemeyer was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the 15th December 1907. Oscar Niemeyer graduated from the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro in 1934.

At this time Oscar Niemeyer joined a team of Brazilian architects collaborating with Le Corbusier on a new Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro. Oscar Niemeyer worked with Lucio Costa and Le Corbusier till 1938 on this project.

The corbusian influence is evident in the early works of Oscar Niemeyer. However, the architect gradually acguired his own style: the lightness of the curved forms created spaces that transformed the architectural scheme into something that was hitherto unknown; harmony, grace and elegance are the adjectives that are most appropriate to describe the work of Oscar Niemeyer. The adaptations produced by the architect to connect the baroque vocabulary with modernist architecture made possible formal experiences in spectacular volumes, executed by famous mathematicians including the Brazilian Joaquim Cardoso and the Italian Pier Luigi Nervi.

The architecture of Brasilia, glimpsed in the sketches submitted by Lucio Costa for the international design contest for the new capital of Brazil, was the result of Oscar Niemeyer ’s definitive impetus on the scene of the international history of contemporary architecture. The concave and convex domes of the National Congress and the columns of the Alvorada and Planalto palaces and the Supreme Court are highly original features. Combining these with the spectacular forms of the columns of the Cathedral and the palaces of Itamaraty and Justica, Oscar Niemeyer succeeded in closing the rectangular and symmetrical perspective formed by the repetition of the Esplanada and Ministry buildings.

The use of reinforced concrete to form curves or as a shell and the unique use of the aesthetic possibilities of the straight line were translated into factories, skyscrapers, exhibition centers, residential areas, theaters, temples, head office buildings for public and private sector companies, universities, clubs, hospitals and buildings for various social schemes. Of these, the following are worthy of special mention: the Obra do Berco and residence on the Estrada das Canoas in Rio de Janeiro; The Duchen factory, the Copan building and Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo; the Pampulha architectural complex including a casino, restaurant and the Temple of St. Francis of Assisi, in Belo Horizonte; the design for the Hotel de Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais, the Caracas Museum in Venezuela, the headquarters building of the Communist Party in Paris, the head office of Editora Mondatori in Milan, the Constantine University in Algeria and the Niteroi Museum of Contemporary Art, Rio de Janeiro.

More pictures: www.auditoriumoscarniemeyer.it.

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