Niemeyer's napkin dream realized

The small Asturian town of Avilés has a new flagship building. It is pure white and as sinuous as the waves that its veteran Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer - now 103 years old - sees from his studio in Copacabana.

The US actor Kevin Spacey - who has been running the Old Vic theater in London for the last seven years - was here to inaugurate the center's auditorium with a talk about the state of culture in times of crisis, and he was so enthusiastic about the project that he promised to come back with a play. "I plan to go up on stage and bring this auditorium Shakespeare's Richard III, so that the people of a small town may enjoy culture," he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people stood in line outside to take an elevator up to the 20-meter tall tower's panoramic deck. Those who lacked the patience to wait opted instead for a ground-level view of the wave-shaped auditorium. "The entire city is out in force, not to mention all the people from surrounding towns," said a member of the González family, here to see in person what the much bragged-about center is like.

For an entire weekend, the talk of the town revolved around the famous napkin on which Niemeyer reportedly sketched out the building that he planned as a gift to the Prince of Asturias Foundation in 2005 (he himself accepted the Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts in 1989). Making this informal draft a reality has taken close to three years of work and an investment of 43 million euro, disbursed entirely by the Asturian government in the hopes that it would do for Avilés, a rust-belt town, what the Guggenheim has done for Bilbao.

"This city was looking for an opportunity after experiencing a tough industrial rationalization," said the center's director, Natalio Grueso.

"That is why, when we showed up here with a doodle, they just stared at us in disbelief."

But by last Friday, residents had exchanged their puzzled looks for feelings of anticipation, as 10,000 people filled the center's main square to hear Woody Allen and the New Orleans Jazz Band play a concert here. "Two thousand high-school students have discovered a new musical style. We want to open culture up to all audiences, using excellence as our only criteria," said Grueso proudly.

Organizers are also proud of what they term "the great democratic stands," in reference to the single stall to be found inside an auditorium with a seating capacity for 961.

They say that Niemeyer, despite his advanced age, was involved in the entire project, "even in the design of the doorhandles," according to Grueso. On opening day, Carlos Oscar Niemeyer read a letter written by his famous grandfather, in which he expressed great joy at seeing the completion of his only building in Spain despite a lifetime of creating projects across the globe, including the entire city of Brasilia, the campus of the University of Haifa in Israel, and the headquarters of the French Communist Party in Paris.