Life is more important than architecture.
Oscar NiemeyerRead
When you have a large space to conquer, the curve is the natural solution.
Interpretation
Embracing fluid forms and curves can bring beauty and harmony when dealing with expansive spaces.
Oscar Niemeyer's quote emphasizes the importance of using curves in design and architecture, particularly in large spaces. The 'natural solution' refers to how organic, flowing shapes often create a more aesthetically pleasing and harmonious environment, contrasting with rigid and linear designs that may feel confining or artificial.
In practice
An architect might use this quote to inspire a team during the brainstorming phase of a new building project.
Life is more important than architecture.
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.
We need to feel that life is important; we need that fantasy so we can live a little better.
Here, then, is what I wanted to tell you of my architecture. I created it with courage and idealism, but also with an awareness of the fact that what is important is life, friends and attempting to make this unjust world a better place in which to live.
I was attracted by the curve β the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches.
Curves are the essence of my work because they are the essence of Brazil, pure and simple.
Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.
Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means.
Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with.
It was thought, perception, sensations that interested her, the conscious mind as a river through time, and how to represent its onward roll, as well as all the tributaries that would swell it, and the obstacles that would divert it. If only she could reproduce the clear light of a summer's morning.
Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?
The Arts are man's most useless ... and essential ... activity.
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