When I was very little my mother said I used to draw in the air with my fingers. I needed a pencil. Once I could hold one, I have drawn every day since.

We hated Bauhaus. It was a bad time in architecture. They just didn’t have any talent. All they had were rules. Even for knives and forks they created rules. Picasso would never have accepted rules. The house is like a machine? No! The mechanical is ugly. The rule is the worst thing. You just want to break it.

I was attracted by the curve — the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches.

The architect's role is to fight for a better world, where he can produce an architecture that serves everyone and not just a group of privileged people.

Humanity needs dreams to be able to survive the miseries of daily existence, even if only for an instant.

I have always accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin.

Architecture is my work, and Ive spent my whole life at a drawing board, but life is more important than architecture. What matters is to improve human beings.