Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.

Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.

I've said goodbye to the overworked notion that architecture has to save the world.

The first 10 years of my professional life had only to do with running away from my father. He was a wonderful cabinet-maker, and me being the eldest son, I had to take over his shop, his profession and so on and so on. I tried to escape by going to art school and then going on to industrial design and then interior design.

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.

Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. It's about intensive research, really. The concentration is warm and intimate and like the fire inside the earth - intense but not distorted. You can go to a place, really feel it in your heart. It's actually a beautiful feeling.

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.