France’s Château La Coste will make history this summer with the realization of one of Oscar Niemeyer’s last architectural drawings. 

Set idyllically amongst the Château’s 500-acre estate in one of the country’s most significant wine regions, the latest in a series of pavilions will play host to a 1,250-square-foot art gallery and 80-seat cylindrical auditorium. 

The project was initiated in 2010 and took more than a year to perfect, resulting in a striking final gift to his adopted home and its age-old craft, which Niemeyer considered a sacred and essential human activity.

Visitors will enter the pavilion’s glass facade across from a shallow reflecting pool that provides a perfect frame for the structure’s signature curved form and surrounding Provencial terroir. Niemeyer worked alongside founder Paddy McKillen and his grandson-in-law, architect Jair Valera, to select the site and perfect his drawing in a process that took about a year leading up to his death in 2012.

Niemeyer’s designs left a lasting legacy in France beginning with his exile there from the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1964. Now, with past works by Frank Gehry, Louise Bourgeois, and Jean Nouvel as its vineyard neighbors, the pavilion will join the architect’s cultural center in Le Havre and Communist Party headquarters in Paris as a testament to his unshakable dedication to life’s work and learned affinity for France’s landscape and culture.