"Since the cradle," said Leiko Oshima, "I was destined to browse the world in search of cosmopolitan truth. I can't help being a 'thinking reed' as I live in the country of Pascal and Sartre."
Leiko -- this Romanized spelling of her name is her choice -- is artistic and aspiring. Coming from a family of high achievers, she forges her own way in the career that, she said, "fills the need of my aesthetic exploration." Although she is an excelling freelance architect living in Paris, she says that the cultural bridges she aims to set up between Japan and other countries are not confined to buildings. She includes many specialist and high-quality disciplines that she wants to bring together.
Leiko was born in 1966 in Bethlehem, Pa. At that time, her father was visiting professor in physics at the University of Lehigh. Leiko grew up in Japan. Drawn by the beauty of its campus, she entered the University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo. "They were enriching years," she said. "I was most interested in French, and was head of the university's French circle, and prize winner in a French speech contest. In my junior year I spent three months in Nice, and in my senior year I studied advanced French in Boston. I painted, wrote, and loved classical music, and found a synthesis of arts in architecture." After gaining her bachelor's degree in foreign literature, Leiko won admission to two national universities in France. Of the two, she chose Montpellier University, "because of its excellent architectural school."