This item appeared as a “Quick Take” in the Times yesterday:
Niemeyer a month before his 103rd birthday
Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer celebrated his 103rd birthday Wednesday with the launch of a museum dedicated to his career.
The Oscar Niemeyer Foundation outside Rio de Janeiro will house exhibits about the legendary architect’s 70 years of work.
Niemeyer is responsible for more than 600 modernist projects around the world. They include the sweeping concrete structures that house Brazil’s government in the capital, Brasilia, and U.N. headquarters in New York.
Niemeyer is still working and has won numerous awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988.
There is a significant commerical building by Niemeyer right here in the Times’ backyard, of course. The former Beauty Pavilion, at 8760 Sunset Blvd. on the Sunset Strip, was commissioned by a famous plastic surgeon in the 1960s and is still in use as the headquarters for Mutato Muzika, a music production company that scores television shows and movies owned by Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh.
The building’s original white finish has been painted a traffic-stopping chartreuse, which could well be a tad too post-modern for the great modernist architect’s tastes.
Beauty Pavilion
The design was commissioned in the mid-1960s by Dr. Robert Frankyn, a plastic surgeon to the stars, who specialized in what he called “beauty parlor” surgery. Franklyn was also the author of a series of books on beauty: “The Art of Staying Young,” “A Doctor’s Quick Way to Achieve Lasting Beauty” and “Developing Bosom Beauty,” as well as a 1960 autobiography titled “Beauty Surgeon.”
