'Right angles separate and divide.
Personally, I have always loved curves, which are an essential feature
of the natural world. It is not easy to draw curves, to give them the
spontaneity they demand and then to organize them in space in such a way
as to achieve the visual architectural effect that one is looking for.
Like Matisse, I maintain that my curves are not gratuitous; they have a
meaning. At one point, even Le Corbusier, who had proclaimed the virtues
of right angles, began to despise them. In the end he admitted that we
were right. One day he said to me: What you do is baroque, but you do it very well. You have the mountains of Rio in your eyes.'
You wonder: how much intelligence is there outside academia, which has tried to monopolize it. There's an awful pomposity about academics. Lots of them are as thick as swans. Not just in terms of a lack of what is now fashionably called 'social skills' (but in another age would have been called basic human decency), but also in terms of how they understand life and contribute to it. The 'life of the mind' and other such conceits. The pure theory of the science/philosopher. "We are not of this world" they like to pretend. A rare bird existing in the rarefied air of the greats, or near the upper echelons of the gods, if you like.
The idea of the university.
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