Curves Of Time, The - The Memoirs Of Oscar Niemeyer

Some people live to work while others work to live, and based on this charmingly relaxed and meandering memoir, it would seem that Oscar Niemeyer definitely falls in the latter category. Not to say that he doesn't spend considerable time here musing on his crowning architectural achievement, Brasilia. It's just that he does so the same way that he recounts everything else here, dispensing with details and strict linearity (much like in his built work), shifting casually between different points in time (including the very days he is working on what became this book), and focusing on the human relationships and friendships behind a project (such as with Lucia Costa, his mentor and the so-called "father of Brazilian modernism," as well as Le Corbusier). Niemeyer designed the vast majority of the municipal buildings for Brasilia, the city built "overnight" in the 1960s out of the desolate interior of his native Brazil to serve as the country's new capital. The sensuously curvy modernism of its skyline has effectively become his stylistic signature.