The official opening of Niemeyer Center (Centro Niemeyer) was held this week in Aviles, (Asturias, Spain). That ambitious cultural project was carried out by legendary and brilliant Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (he was born in December 15, 1907).

The first stone was laid 4 years ago, in April 2007. This unusual structure with spiral staircase consists of a three-storey dome-shaped museum, an auditorium for 1000 spectators, almost 4.000 square meter open-plan exhibition site and a viewing tower over the estuary and the city panoramic view. This cultural complex will also contain a multi-use building with rehearsal areas, conference and meeting halls, cinema house and an open square to hold entertainment and cultural activities.

The Niemeyer Center is the only creature by Oscar Niemeyer in Spain. The first sketches, drawn with a thick black marker, later where transformed into an ambitious cultural master plan and in his own words, it's the one he most loves of all he has done outside of Brazil: "I am making such a unique work for my first time, and it represents one of the highest points of my ongoing effort to transform architecture into a piece of art".

According to the author, the center opens the doors to culture in of all its directions and forms, traditions and styles; music, theater, cinema, indoor and outdoor exhibitions, conferences and educational programs.

Oscar Niemeyer is one of the founders of the of modern Brazilian architecture school, a pioneer in exploring the formal possibilities of reinforced concrete solely for their aesthetic impact. Niemeyer architecture is distinguished by plasticity, expressiveness and warmth. As he said: "It is not the right angle that attracts me, nor the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve - the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman."