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Brazil's modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer was honored on his 99th birthday Friday by the city he helped build from the ground up with the inauguration of a new library and museum he designed.
Niemeyer, whose late-1950s work creating Brasilia garnered him world fame, was not on hand to enjoy the city's honors -- he was recuperating from a broken leg after a fall in Rio de Janeiro, where friends toasted him.
"Parties are not his style," his granddaughter Ana Lucia told a local newspaper, one month after Niemeyer remarried, to a woman in her 60s.
She told Correio Braziliense that he preferred to work in his penthouse apartment, where he has a view of Rio's Copacabana beach.
In mid-November Niemeyer tied the knot with secretary Vera Lucia Cabreira at his Rio home, celebrating with wine and Cuban cigars. He only informed his family the next day, according to reports.
"Only the authorities who carried out the ceremony and a small group of friends who were witnesses were there," Niemeyer said at the time.
Niemeyer was married for 76 years to Annita Baldo, who died in 2004.
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AFP 151807 GMT 12 06
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