Niemeyer’s University of Constantine (later renamed Mentouri University) represented a radical evolution of his already revolutionary University of Brasilia. Classrooms and faculties were housed in large blocks stretching for hundreds of meters. Not only were these behemoths unprecedented feats of engineering, but with their deliberately open interior layouts, they also sought to encourage the intermingling and cross-fertilization of faculties and disciplines. While this ‘university of the future’ was built according to the budgetary constraints of the newly independent country, Niemeyer nevertheless managed to imbue it with playfulness and wit. Each of the campus buildings corresponded to an element found in an office. The library shaped like a pencil sharpener. The classroom block as straight and as long as a ruler. The concrete monolith and the nearby fountain in the vast open plaza resembling a pen and its inkwell. In Mentouri University I we see the most striking of these buildings, the Mohamed Seddik Benyahia Auditorium with its elegant curved roof whose tips barely touch the ground. To some the auditorium is shaped like an open book, to others it’s more like a bird in flight. Either way it is an object of beauty and a symbol of freedom and learning.