Sphere we go!

How did an industrial estate in Leipzig end up home to the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer's final project? Take a seat in his eye-popping restaurant

- By Marion Lougheed

Perched among old brick buildings in an industrial neighbourhood of Leipzig in eastern Germany, a giant white sphere appears to hover over the corner of a former boiler house. Is it a giant's golf ball? An alien spacecraft? A fallen planet?

Twelve metres in diameter, the Niemeyer Sphere is the final design of world-famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and probably the most surprising creation by a visionary who valued the sensation of newness in art above all else, the result being mesmerising buildings that seem both space age and out of this world. The Sphere is like a vision from the future, dropped among used-car dealerships and construction equipment rental outlets, in a working-class neighbourhood that few tourists would ever pass through by design.

The Sphere has only been open since June 2020, when its arrival was barely noticed due to Covid, but the journey from idea to inauguration took two decades. Throughout the construction process, photographer Margret Hoppe documented its various elaborate stages. The Spirit of Past Future, an exhibition of her shots, has just opened in the building, also featuring work by Armenian artist Nvard Yerkanian.

This exhibition tells the story of modernist architecture, including artful photographs of Bauhaus structures, which Niemeyer found too rules-based, and buildings by Le Corbusier, who employed the young, not-yet-famous Brazilian architect as a draftsman at the beginning of his career. The Niemeyer Sphere crowns that career.