Dear Dr. Costa,

You are right about the roof. I am redesigning it with a 12-degree pitch—a compromise, but one that preserves the horizontal emphasis while shedding water. Your article on the fazenda houses is extraordinary. I had no idea that the Brazilian veranda was descended from the Arabic mashrabiya via Portuguese colonial practice. This is precisely the kind of lineage I hoped to discover here.

I am beginning to think that São Paulo's architectural problem is not a lack of tradition but an excess of amnesia. The city demolishes itself every twenty years. My task, as I now understand it, is not to import European modernism but to help the city remember what it already knows.

Yours,
Louis Vega