Professor of the Chinese-Japanese-Korean Language Teaching Research Office

I am an architect and urban planner with a double master degree (Arch. Urb.) from the University of Sao Paulo (USP), there I started my academic career which began with a boost from winning the very prestigious ‘Opera Prima’ (IX Paviflex Award) award for best architecture graduate work in Brazil in 1996. I assumed my first position as Senior Lecturer in 2001 still in Brazil. For the first ten years of my graduation I worked both in practice and in academia. In 2005, following Einstein’s Formula for Happiness (“a calm and modest life”), I moved to NZ and was able to fully dedicate myself to an academic life, working first for The Auckland University then, VUW. My practice work in Brazil centered not only in a architecture office. I worked for five years coordinating cultural grants to artists and museums working closely with major Brazilian museums. I have maintained an active interest in cultural engagement and in NZ I have worked volunteering in a number of Latin American matters such as the AiLaSA (Ass. Iberian &Latin American Studies of Australasia), the NZ Latin American Film Festival and at the Brazilian Embassy of Wellington. Modern Architecture has been the central focus of my research interest since my first publication in 1997. My particular theme around this rather colossal topic of MA, relates to de adaptation of modernism to the climate and culture of a given country. I developed my Master’s thesis around this topic and I am currently developing my PhD thesis round it. When I arrived in NZ, I participated in founding the national DoCoMoMo (Documentation and Conservation of Modern Movement), an international association that has national chapters in more than sixty countries worldwide. Apart from architecture, another passion of mine has been cinema. The first area led me to my professional career, the second led to numerous contributions professional and artistic as art director and producer of a number of awarded shorts. In NZ I have participated on and off in many such endeavors and produced a number films for the 48 Hours film fest and documentaries concerning architecture in NZ. Current research projects I am currently working on research a project that investigates modern architecture in peripheral countries focused on the Brazilian and the New Zealand house. My second project has been exploring cinema and visions of architecture in movies and animes.