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

My buildings should have an emotional core –a space which, in itself, has an emotional nice feeling.

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

The bottom line may be that my inventing buildings is, indeed, a very private kind of activity. But it's done to be shared. It is comforting and consoling. From the reactions I get I can see I'm not doing something strange.

Architecture to me is whole. I cannot say I only care about this 25% and the other 75% I let go... it's just I want to work the way I want to work. In my shop, you can order certain things and other things you cannot. They are not available.

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.

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