When Brazil's President Lula da Silva was elected for his second term last October, he crossed the threshold of Oscar Niemeyer's Paldcio da Alvorada (Palace of Dawn), his official Brasilia residence, into a beautifully restored, gleaming building. This was a marked contrast to the deteriorating, leaky building he had encountered when he first assumed the presidency in 2002. So leaky, in fact, that during a visit by President Clinton in 1997, an array of buckets had to be installed behind a temporary screen in the state dining room to cope with the infiltration which by then had become commonplace during Brasilia's rainy season. Today, the Alvorada looks as good, if not better — due to mature landscaping — than it did upon completion in 1958, and is open for public tours on Wednesday afternoons, a showcase for the Brazilian presidency and for Modern architecture. This is Niemeyer, who will turn 100 on December 15 this year, at his best.
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