Assouline: Oscar Niemeyer Architecture Coffee Table Book, First Edition

Oscar Niemeyer made modernist architecture sexy. In his signature designs, such as those for the planned capital city of Brasília, Niemeyer created a distinctively buoyant architectural vocabulary of sweeping curves, flowing lines and organic forms (attributes that also characterize his seductive furniture). As expressions of faith in the power of modern architecture and design to foster progress, Niemeyer’s buildings have a kind of heroic poetry.

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho was born to an upper-middle-class family in Rio de Janeiro. (His father was a graphic designer.) While in graduate school, Niemeyer began working for Lúcio Costa, one of the few modernist architects working in Brazil in the 1930s. Niemeyer would be assigned to the design team for a new building in Rio for the Ministry of Education and Health. The famed Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier was hired as a consultant on the project, and through him Niemeyer would absorb many lessons in bringing a sense of structural lightness to large buildings — though he would never embrace the geometric forms espoused by Le Corbusier and the members of the Bauhaus.

“I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man,” Niemeyer would write in his memoirs. “I am attracted to free-flowing sensual curves.”

Nowhere would Niemeyer demonstrate his love of curvature more expressively and elegantly than in his designs for the principal buildings for Brasília, a project begun in 1956. The dramatic Congressional Palace features two stark towers flanked by a domed structure and a bowl-shaped edifice, for the upper and lower legislative houses. He placed the Palácio da Alvorada (the presidential residence) on a small peninsula jutting into a lake, so that the sequence of parabolic columns on its facade casts a mirror image on the water. Niemeyer’s grandest achievement was the city’s cathedral, a stunning composition of 16 arched vertical supports with tinted-glass interstices.

Four years after Brasília was completed, in 1960, Brazil’s elected government was overthrown in a military coup. Niemeyer, a member of the Communist party, was harassed continually by the junta. He left the country and did not return until democracy was restored, in 1985.

While in exile, in the early 1970s, Niemeyer began collaborating on furniture designs with his daughter, Anna Maria Niemeyer. Their best known pieces are seating furniture — the Alta lounge chair and ottoman and the Rio rocking chaise, which have flowing bases made of sheets of lacquered wood or stainless steel, share the aesthetics of Niemeyer’s architecture.

The Alta’s deep, oversized seat pads nod — much like the chair designs of Niemeyer’s countryman Sergio Rodrigues — to the Brazilian penchant for long, languorous conversations. Examples of both designs are priced at about $20,000, depending on age, condition and materials. As you will see on these pages, Oscar Niemeyer’s furniture designs are sleek, sculptural, comfortable and elegant — as well as a compact emblem of the work of one of the great architects of our time.

Find vintage Oscar Niemeyer lounge chairs, tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.

Assouline Publishing has made the coffee-table book cool again. The revolutionary company is best known for sumptuously illustrated books on fashion, art, travel and photography. Its exquisite hardcover volumes are beautiful to look at and are of impeccable editorial quality.

Assouline Publishing was established in 1994 by Prosper and Martine Assouline. The family company quickly outgrew its modest initial office, which was located in the basement of what was then the couple’s apartment, and the pair eventually opened a proper office on rue Danielle Casanova in the French capital city. Assouline’s initial offerings focused on designers, artists and fashion houses, with books about Azzedine Alaïa, Dior and Chanel captivating readers in the publisher’s early days. These books have sold millions of copies all over the world.

Owing to the decline of print media, luxury companies found in Assouline a venue to help showcase their products and adequately position their branding in front of consumers. From its earliest days, Assouline has published opulent hardcovers that broke the mold, from illustrated tomes celebrating fashion legends and high-society doyens to hand-bound limited-edition art monographs with Italian linen covers.

Highly anticipated Assouline titles, such as Yves Saint Laurent: The Impossible Collection, Chinese Art: The Impossible Collection and Art Deco Style, are published with consistency every year.

While books remain at the forefront of Assouline, the publishing house has also expanded into producing alluring decorative objects and furnishings for the home.

Today, Alex Assouline, the son of Prosper and Martine, heads Assouline Publishing. Under his guidance, the brand developed a lucrative new branch that is focused on curating private libraries for homes, offices, hotels and other commercial properties.

On 1stDibs, find collectible Assouline books and other items today.