“I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete.… This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women.”

— Oscar Niemeyer

The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer (2000), p. 62.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter …" by Oscar Niemeyer?

Oscar Niemeyer 14

Brazilian architect 1907–2012

Related quotes

“It is not the right angle that attracts me, nor the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve — the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman.”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

As quoted in Plans, Sections and Elevations : Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century (2004) by Richard Weston
Variant translations:
It is not the right angle that attracts me,
Nor the hard, inflexible straight line, man-made.
What attracts me are free and sensual curves.
The curves in my country’s mountains,
In the sinuous flow of its rivers,
In the beloved woman’s body.
As quoted in "Architect of Optimism" http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db740a7a-e897-11db-b2c3-000b5df10621.html?nclick_check=1, Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times (2007-04-13)
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 favourite woman.
Of curves is made all the universe.
As quoted on a Photo page on the Museum of Contemporary Art over Baia da Guanabara http://app.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/122423/?nextnav=favs&navuser=1

“I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature.”

Jorge Luis Borges book A Universal History of Infamy

A Universal History of Iniquity, preface to the 1954 edition; tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Context: I would define the baroque as that style that deliberately exhausts (or tries to exhaust) its own possibilities, and that borders on self-caricature. [... ] The baroque is the final stage in all art, when art flaunts and squanders its resources.

“First were the thick stone walls, the arches, then the domes and vaults — of the architect, searching out for wider spaces.
Now it is concrete-reinforced that gives our imagination flight with its soaring spans and uncommon cantilevers. Concrete, to which architecture is integrated, through which it is able to discard the foregone conclusions of rationalism, with its monotony and repetitious solutions.
A concern for beauty, a zest for fantasy, and an ever-present element of surprise bear witness that today's architecture is not a minor craft bound to straight-edge rules, but an architecture imbued with technology: light, creative and unfettered, seeking out its architectural scene.”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

Acceptance speech, Pritzker Architecture Prize http://www.pritzkerprize.com/bunnei.htm#Oscar%20Niemeyer's%20Acceptance%20Speech (1988).

“I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"The Emotional Factor"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
Often paraphrased as "The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Context: You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or even mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.