Schwarz
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Like his mentors, Niemeyer was a Modernist. Modernist architects strove to create disorientating environments that were self-contained and separate from their surroundings. Like the painters they associated with, they attempted to shock people into reevaluating their middle-class world view. Le Corbusier, one of the founders of the movement, tried to achieve this effect through the creation of what he called "Radiant Cities," made up of homogeneous concrete slab buildings which sat on columns, surrounded by parkland and ribboned with superhighways. Architects around the world incorporated modernist principles into their projects for the next several decades, but no one was able to build an entire radiant city. Then, in 1956, the President of Brazil, Jucilino Kubitchek, announced that he was going to commission the building of a new capital in a desolate area of rolling scrubland. Urban planner Lucio Costa won the bid and Oscar Niemeyer was commissioned as the chief architect.