Architect Niemeyer marries at 98

A month before his 99th birthday, world-renowned Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer announced that he had married his 60-year-old secretary Vera Lucia Gabreira.

“Vera and I got married yesterday, November 16 at 10.30pm, in my residence, in a simple ceremony witnessed by the civil authorities who performed the wedding and a small group of friends,” Niemeyer said in a short statement on Friday.

The architect known for his modernistic style lives in an apartment in Rio’s posh Ipanema district.

It was Niemeyer’s second marriage following the death in 2004 of his first wife of 76 years, Annita Baldor.

Gabreira, a widow, and Niemeyer have known each for 30 years. She became his secretary 14 years ago, the newspaper said.

Niemeyer has one daughter, five grandchildren, 13 grat-grandchildren, and five great-great grandchildren.

Perhaps his best-known creation was the National Congress building in Brasilia, the capital. The building is designed as two giant white bowls – one upside-down – with twin 330ft towers rising between them. In 1987, Unesco declared Brasilia a World Heritage site.

After a 1964 coup began a 21-year military dictatorship, Niemeyer, a lifelong communist, went into exile to France, where in 1965 he designed the headquarters of the French Communist Party in Paris. He also created dozens of projects in the US, Israel, Lebanon, Algeria, Italy, Germany and Portugal.