I’m a passionate architect... I do not work for money

When I concentrate on a specific site or place for which I am going to design a building, I try to plumb its depths, its form, its history and its sensuous qualities.

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

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

I grew up in a craftsman's home, where things were done with our own hands. I did cabinetmaking for four years and I hated it.

I am convinced that a good building must be capable of absorbing the traces of human life and taking on a specific richness... I think of the patina of age on materials, of innumerable small scratches on surfaces, of varnish that has grown dull and brittle, and of edges polished by use.

If you're lucky, and a building succeeds, the real product has many more dimensions than you can ever imagine. You have the sun, the light, the rain, the birds, the feel.