Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity.

There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. Its the art of putting all your energy into one thing; its the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.

Every year I spend one month just sailing, but I still work when Im on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island.

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.

My inspiration came from the land, ... and, of course, from Paul Klee . . . and the poetics of his paintings.

A piazza is not a plaza. The plaza is the theme park of the piazza; the plaza is the commercial version. A piazza is an empty space with no function. This is what Europeans understand.

Knowing how to do things not just with the head, but with the hands as well: this might seem a programmatic and ideological goal. It is not. It is a way of safeguarding creative freedom.