Oscar Niemeyer passed away on Wednesday 5 December 2012 in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 104. This year’s Annual Report pays tribute to a major international architect of the 20thcentury.

MAD Architects is a symbol of Chinese innovation in the 21st century. The firm promotes new, characteristic buildings that bring a natural environment back into our increasingly urban worlds.

Lebanese-American Joumana Jamhouri, a graduate of New York Institute of Photography, focuses on industrial and architectural photography and also produces landscape and documentary work.

The artist Nek Chand was discovered by the Collection de l’Art Brut Museum in Lausanne. Born in Berian Kalan (India) in 1924, he started working on the construction of Chandigarh in the early 1950s, when the Indian government commissioned the Swiss architect Le Corbusier to design the city.

His art is spontaneous and ephemeral, a poetic way of revealing the emotions contained in the elements. The artist’s intention is not to impose his stamp on nature but to work instinctively with it, so that his creations convey, however briefly, a sense of harmonious contact with the natural world.