If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.

What I try to do is the art of building, and the art of building is the art of construction; it is not only about forms and shapes and images.

I design for the use of a building and the place and for the people who use it... the reputation for arrogance comes because when work is offered to me, I look whether I can find a genuine interest in quality.

Presence is like a gap in the flow of history, where all of [a] sudden it is not past and not future.

In order to design buildings with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction.

Architecture has its own realm. It has a special physical relationship with life. I do not think of it primarily as either a message or symbol, but as an envelope and background for life which goes on in and around it, a sensitive container for the rhythm of footsteps on the floor, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep.

There was a time when I experienced architecture without thinking about it.