Brazilian architect Niemeyer hospitalized in Rio

Oscar Niemeyer Museum (NovoMuseu), Curitiba, Brazil. Photo by Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – Renown Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who turned 104 last December, was hospitalized in a Rio hospital overnight but his condition was not deemed serious, local media reports said Thursday.

Niemeyer was admitted to the Samaritano hospital in Rio’s Botafogo district with severe flu but his condition “is not serious,” according to a spokeswoman quoted by the R7 website of the TV channel Record.

“He is fine,” she added.

In 2010, the star architect, who won the 1988 Pritzker Prize — “architecture’s Nobel” — was hospitalized for a urinary infection.

During his seven-decade career, Niemeyer has designed more than 600 projects around the world, and is famous for some of Brazil’s most distinctive buildings.

His works include a suite of the government building in the national capital city Brasilia and the headquarters for the United Nations in New York.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer at age 40.