University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

I am selecting this book to honor the work of my favorite architect, Oscar Niemeyer, a fellow Brazilian considered one of the fathers of modern architecture. I had the privilege to grow up surrounded by his beautiful and inspiring work in the Pampulha area of Belo Horizonte, where Niemeyer designed four buildings arranged around an urban lake. These early creations became some of his most celebrated work. Through his art, Niemeyer aimed “to be simple, to create a world equal to everyone, to look at people with optimism.” A similar attitude to life was imparted to me by my parents, who raised me in an environment drenched in the beauty of nature, art, and poetry and taught me to appreciate the beauty of sublime simplicity. My mother always said that “Niemeyer is poetry written in reinforced concrete.”

Niemeyer took as the main inspiration for his work the curves of nature, and said: “It is not the right angle that attracts me. Nor the straight line, tough, inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free, sensual curve. The curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the waves of the sea, in the clouds of the sky, in the body of the beloved woman. Of curves is made all the universe. The curved universe of Einstein.”