At this present time, matter is still the best way to think of architecture, but I'm not so sure for very long. The computer is radicalizing the way we think about our world.

If you're into architecture and you're from the West, everything is hors d'oeuvres for working to rebuild the Temple. Ultimately you're led there. You can't escape it.

You can just drift unhappily towards this vision of heaven on earth, and ultimately that is what architecture is a vision of: Heaven on earth, at it's best.

I see man more as an instrument or an agent more than anything else.

Student journeys which were important to me were Sicily, Greece, and Egypt, where I really saw these buildings, and that is where you're able to grasp what things mean.

The beast for me is greed. Whether you read Dante, Swift, or any of these guys, it always boils down to the same thing: the corruption of the soul.

I have a book of buildings from 25,000 BC. These are huts built out of mammoth bones. These buildings were beautifully made, from the bones of the body into shelter.