Brazilian architect Maria Carlota (Lota) de Macedo Soares was BOTD in 1910. Born in Paris, France, to a prominent Brazilian political family. A self-trained architect, she was commissioned to design and oversee the construction of Aterro do Flamengo (Flamengo Park), the largest public park and recreation centre in Rio de Janeiro. She is best-known for her relationship with American poet Elizabeth Bishop, meeting while Bishop was touring Brazil in 1951. The couple lived together for 12 years, spending much of their time in the ultramodern home Soares designed in Samambaia. Bishop dedicated her 1965 poetry collection Questions of Travel to Soares. Charismatic and ambitious, Soares wrote to the Guanabara state governor, proposing herself as his successor and setting out a five-year political plan, including replacing public statues of thin women (an “unpatriotic allusion to the state of our underdevelopment”) with statues of plus-sized women. Soares eventually lost control over the Flamengo Park project, which was finished by Affonso Eduardo Reidy and Roberto Burle Marx. She suffered a nervous breakdown, putting strain on her relationship with Bishop, and was eventually hospitalised. On her release, she travelled to New York to join Bishop, taking an overdose of tranquilisers on her day of arrival. She died a week later, aged 57.