Oscar Niemeyer Soares Filho studied architecture at the National School of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro. His first solo project was the plan for a complex within Pampulha, a new suburb of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Commissioned in 1941 by Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, then mayor of Belo Horizonte, the scheme included a church, casino, dance hall, restaurant, yacht club, golf club, and the mayor’s weekend retreat, all situated around an artificial lake. Niemeyer served as chief architect for NOVA-CAP, the government building authority in Brasília, from 1956 to 1961. Among the Brasília buildings designed by Niemeyer are the President’s Palace, the Brasília Palace Hotel, the Ministry of Justice building, the presidential chapel, and the cathedral. In 1961 Niemeyer returned to private practice and for a time lived in Paris and Israel. Niemeyer’s other architectural projects include the Ministry of Defense building in Brasília in 1968 and Constantine University (now Mentouri University) in Constantine, Algeria, in 1969. He continued to design new buildings, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói, Brazil, which opened in 1996. In 2007 he began designing a cultural centre for Avilés, Spain, where in 1989 he had received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. The building was inaugurated in 2011.