Oscar Niemeyer

Niemeyer said he was not drawn to the right angle but to the free, sensual curve he found in mountains, rivers and the body of a woman. Given an empty plateau in 1956, he designed the public buildings of a whole capital in under four years.

A lifelong communist, he was exiled to Paris after the 1964 coup and went on building. He worked until the month he died, three weeks short of a hundred and five, and is buried in Rio with a view he had drawn many times.