Oscar Niemeyer's buildings in Brasília

Between 1956 and his death in 2012, Oscar Niemeyer drew almost every civic building that gives the Brazilian capital its silhouette, from the presidential residence finished before the city was inaugurated to a television tower completed fifty-five years later. This list follows that work across the Monumental Axis and out to Ceilândia, noting the commission date, what each building was built to hold, and which of them a visitor can actually get into. Courthouses and palaces sit alongside a cinema, a parish church and a memorial to Indigenous peoples, because Niemeyer built all of them to the same set of curves.

Places in this collection

  • JK Memorial — Built in 1980 for Juscelino Kubitschek, the president who commissioned Brasília and governed from 1956 to 1961, and who is buried inside it…
  • Tribunal Superior Eleitoral — The court that runs Brazil's elections, designed around 2001 and completed in 2011, a year before Niemeyer died at 104. It is the last of h…
  • Tribunal Superior do Trabalho — The Superior Labour Court, finished in 2006 on the Setor de Administração Federal Sul, where most of the federal judiciary was relocated as…
  • Museu Nacional Honestino Guimarães — A white dome on a raised platform, opened in 2006 as half of the Cultural Complex of the Republic with the Biblioteca Nacional Leonel de Mo…
  • Superior Tribunal de Justiça — Completed in 1995, the court that sits below the Supreme Federal Tribunal in Brazil's judicial hierarchy and one of the buildings Niemeyer…
  • Memorial dos Povos Indígenas — A spiral of two levels under a low white ring, opened in 1987 and also known as the Museu do Índio, holding collections of Indigenous mater…
  • Casa do Cantador — Niemeyer designed this two-storey hall in Ceilândia, well outside the planned Pilot Plan, as a home for the repente and cordel singers of t…
  • Instituto Central de Ciências — The main teaching building of the University of Brasília, designed in 1962 and built from 1963 as a single curved slab running most of a ki…
  • Cine Brasília — Opened in 1960 as the cinema for the residential superquadras, and still running as one: three levels, ten metres to the roofline, on the c…
  • Palácio do Jaburu — The vice-presidential residence, designed in 1959 and named for the jabiru stork that nests on the peninsula it occupies. Two low storeys u…
  • Palácio do Planalto — The working office of the president, designed in 1958 and standing on the Praça dos Três Poderes as the executive corner of the plaza. Its…
  • Supremo Tribunal Federal — Brazil's highest court, designed in 1958 for the southern side of the Praça dos Três Poderes, where it faces the Palácio do Planalto across…
  • National Congress of Brazil — Designed in 1958 and occupied from 1960, the legislature reads as two twinned towers between a dome and a bowl: the dome covers the Senate,…
  • Igrejinha Nossa Senhora de Fátima — The first church built in Brasília, dated 26 October 1957 and standing less than five metres tall: a single triangular concrete canopy on t…
  • Catedral Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida — Niemeyer designed the hyperboloid structure in 1958, but the cathedral was not dedicated until 31 May 1970, and the sixteen concrete ribs w…
  • Palácio da Alvorada — Designed in 1957 as the residence of the President of Brazil and finished before the capital was formally inaugurated, which makes it the e…

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