Centro Niemeyer Avilés, Cultural Center Spain, Spanish Centre Photo, Design

Centro Niemeyer, Avilés, Spain

Centro Niemeyer Project design by Oscar Niemeyer architect

15 Nov 2011

Centro Niemeyer Avilés is currently closed and may not reopen. Oscar Niemeyer wrote a letter of support for the centre in October. More information online as developments occur.

25 Mar 2011

Centro Niemeyer Avilés

Design: Oscar Niemeyer

Location: Avilés, Spain

Opened 26 Mar 2011

Centro Niemeyer site photos:

Niemeyer Center photograph : Ángel Navarrete

Centro Niemeyer – Introduction

The legendary and brilliant Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer is one of the international acclaimed doyens of the Modern Architect Movement, developing an intensely expressive style in his large volume of executed work that was extremely worldwide influence. He employed an exuberant aesthetic formalist and his lyrical use of reinforced concrete is unique.

Niemeyer Center photos : Ángel Navarrete

In 1989, the now one hundred year old Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer, was awarded the Prince of Asturias of the Arts Award. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Awards in 2006, the Prince of Asturias Foundation (FPA) invited all the award winners to participate in the celebrations.

Niemeyer Center photo : Aereas

By that time he said: “I am an architect and such as, what I do is design buildings and that is just what I am going to do: design a new building”. So that, shoulders to the wheel, on a blank piece of paper, he started sketching curves, a skill in which he stands out. With them, Niemeyer offered us his sculptural forms where it is easy found his free-flowing and optimistic work.

Making History those first sketches, drawn with a thick black marker, became into an ambitious cultural master plan, set in Spain. Brazilia is one of his greatest works and in order to recognize it as a real icon in the Modernist Architecture in XX Century, it received the honor of being Patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO in 1987.

Niemeyer Center photographs : Nardo Villaboy

Centro Niemeyer – Project Description

The project is set in Avilés estuary. Apart from being an important cultural proposal, the Niemeyer Center by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer has a relevant environmental element. It has specially become in the central piece of a wide urban regeneration process that will change completely the waterfront of the city. Without losing its industrial roots, Asturias reinforces like that, the commitment to become into a worldwide icon of sustainability, technology and education, as the best meaning of development.

The genius talent of Oscar Niemeyer has been clearly expressed at Avilés estuary and the foremost experts continuously appreciate it.

The Center is the heart of what one day will be the Island of Innovation; one of the most ambitious projects of recovery of a city only possible to be compared with the challenge Barcelona Olympic Games of 92 and the transformation of the estuary of Bilbao. They are all intimately linked to the universal architecture, and in this case, spearheaded by the Niemeyer Center. The project has just been recently submitted by the team of Norman Foster, banner name that shows the relevant magnitude of this work.

The Niemeyer Project is the only work of the architect in Spain, and in his own words, it’s the one he most loves of all he has done outside of Brazil: “I am making such a unique a work for my first time, and it represents one of the highest points of my ongoing effort to transform architecture into a piece of art”. The first block of stone was laid in April 2007 and since then the Niemeyer Center started to implement his innovate philosophy carrying out many worldwide cultural activities into as a consequence of the ”Niemeyer Center effect”.

Centro Niemeyer Avilés : further information on the spaces & advisory board

Niemeyer Center photo : Tierra Febrero