Internationally, he is one of the most important contemporary architects, with works on five continents. His most significant creation was the city of Brasilia, which he designed with his colleague Licinio Costa and which was declared part of the 'Heritage of Humanity' by UNESCO.

Óscar Niemeyer was born in Rio de Janeiro on the 15th December 1907. After studying in the National School of Fine Arts there, in the thirties, he assisted the French architect, Le Corbusier, one of the 'fathers' of modern architecture, whose ideas were to have a powerful influence on him. Together they worked on the design of the headquarters of the United Nations, in the New York.

At the end of the fifties, the then president of Brazil, Juscelino Kubischek, conceived the idea of creating a new city, designed for half a million inhabitants and built according to the most avant-garde, functionalist architectural design. He commissioned this project for a new Brazilian capital from Niemeyer and his compatriot Licio Costa, who took four years to make it real. Brasilia was inaugurated in 1960 by the Brazilian president. Among its principal architectural achievements, the Plaza of the Three Powers, where the palace of Government, the Supreme Federal Court and the National Congress are located; the Itamaraty Palace, seat of the Chancery; the Avenue of the Ministries; and the Presidential Residence, the Alvorada Palace are noteworthy. The quality of the buildings and the harmony with the natural setting led UNESCO to declare Brasilia 'heritage of Humanity' in 1987.
In 1962 Niemeyer settled in France, where he stayed until 1974. During this time he carried out many architectural projects in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The most outstanding of them are the headquarters of the French Communist Party in Paris; the main building for the Mondadori publishers in Milan, and the Mosque, Civic Centre and University of Algiers.
Back in Brazil, Óscar Niemeyer designed a recreation centre which is popularly known as The Sambodrome, which was built between 1983 and 1984 and has been used since then as the permanent venue for the samba schools in the carioca festival. His last great work is the Memorial to Latin America, designed from a cultural project of the Brazilian anthropologist and professor, Arcy Bibeiro, and inaugurated on the 18th March 1989. This building, situated in Sao Paulo, consists of a hall of 3,200 square metres, a lecture hall with a capacity for 4,000 people, a library with 60,000 volumes, an exhibition pavilion, restaurants, three car parks, and administration and control building and a great civil plaza with a monumental balcony.
Among other important awards, Óscar Niemeyer is the holder of the Lenin Peace Prize (1963), the 'Arquitectura de Hoy' International Prize (1966) and the Pritzker Prize of the Chicago Institute of Art, which he shared with the American, Gordon Bunshaft, in 1988.