Authorities in Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo, have fought a major blaze at a landmark building designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer.

A large plume of smoke billowed from the Latin America Memorial, a cultural centre which hosts an art gallery, an auditorium and other facilities. — bbc.co.uk

Far from being anchored in the local context, the project (the disastrous City of Culture of Galicia outside Santiago de Compostela, designed by Peter Eisenman) has decapitated Monte de Gaias and replaced it with a phony landscape with curves like those of a fun-fair roller coaster. These cynical intellectual manipulations cannot mask the reality of structures resembling supermarkets twisted about with algorithms and camouflaged with a thin veneer of granite (imported from Brasil!). — Uncube

For the latest in the Showcase series Archinect featured Villa Solaire by JKA + FUGA as well as Folkwang Library by Max Dudler. The Folkwang Library took advantage of a special photographic/glazing technique to create the illusion of the facade being fashioned from the stone material itself. Save Western pointed out "It looks like the original proposal was for actual marble, which came back astronomically expensive, so they VE'd to curtain wall instead."

... he did design one house in the US, "where he was long banned because of his leftist political associations," according to an Architectural Digest story from 2005. The 1963 Strick House sits on Santa Monica's architecture-packed La Mesa Drive, and it was designed via post--Niemeyer never visited the site or met Joseph and Anne Strick, who commissioned the house (Joseph was a filmmaker best known for his adaptation of Ulysses and in fact divorced Anne before the house was even finished). — la.curbed.com

I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Oscar Niemeyer. He was an inspiration to me – and to a generation of architects. Few people get to meet their heroes and I am grateful to have had the chance to spend time with him in Rio last year. — fosterandpartners.com

Remarkable projects come from remarkable people and Inhotim is the creation of Bernardo Paz, a mining magnate who has lavishly installed his contemporary art collection across several hillsides in Minas Gerais, an estate of some 5000 acres. Paz has commissioned many architects, to make pavilions specially designed for individual artists, and others that house several artists’ works, all cushioned within the lush vegetation of a botanic garden. — tate.org.uk

The man and the legend behind the concrete mecca known as Brasilia is a ripe 104 years of age, and though he was reported to have been “a bit dehydrated” at Rio’s Hospital Samaritano where he was hospitalized last week (he is thankfully “fine,” as doctors told ABC News), Niemeyer’s old age has not precluded his latest project, a collaboration with sneaker mega-brand Converse. — blogs.artinfo.com

The man who was awarded the 1988 Pritzker Prize continues to devote his afternoons to working on new projects, including a theatre with a capacity for 2 500 people on Flamengo Park, near Rio's Sugarloaf Mountain.

"I came up with a solution that is capable of prompting surprise and attracting the public: a magnificent dome which would be built before the Sugarloaf Mountain," he recently wrote. — timeslive.co.za

A dazzling €44 million (£37.7m) arts centre in the northern Spanish city of Avilés is to close after six months amid political squabbling as the country asks itself what to do with a glut of glittering new museums.

The Niemeyer centre, which was designed by the celebrated 103-year-old Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, was intended to have the same impact on the industrial Cantabrian sea port as the Guggenheim museum has had on Bilbao, 150 miles to the east. — guardian.co.uk

The tower is unmistakably a Niemeyer creation. Standing tall in the heat of Brazil’s interior, it’s concrete dressed in a whitewash, the tower, like all his other creations looks as if it has been plucked from a 1960s conception of a city on the moon. — therealbrazil.com

"I don’t known where I find the time to play around with this, but my samba is just foolishness, a bit of fun, but nothing important," Niemeyer said in an interview published Saturday in the daily O Globo. — Latin American Herald Tribune

The 102-year-old Brazilian architect has been hospitalized for undisclosed reasons.. — Associated Press