What’s Still Left to be Done

Architecture for me has always begun with drawing. When I was very little my mother said I used to draw in the air with my fingers. I needed a pencil. Once I could hold one, I have drawn every day since.

When I have looked at the site for a building, considered its budget and thought of how it might be built, and what it might be, the drawings come very quickly.

I pick up my pen.

It flows.

A building appears.

I think that I entered school because I liked to draw. And drawing brought me to architecture.

I had my own ideas. I wanted a smoother architecture with more freedom, and that is what I did and still do. I think that in the end, intuition always prevails in architecture and art. The important thing is to want to do something.

by Oscar Niemeyer