I dont remember a single thing in my childhood that was not related in some way to building.

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.

Architecture is art. I don't think you should say that too much, but it is art. I mean, architecture is many, many things. Architecture is science, is technology, is geography, is typography, is anthropology, is sociology, is art, is history. You know all this comes together. Architecture is a kind of bouillabaisse, an incredible bouillabaisse. And, by the way, architecture is also a very polluted art in the sense that it's polluted by life, and by the complexity of things.

As an architect you are a builder. You are of course more than a builder. You need to be a militant, you have to be a poet, you have to be a visionary, you have to be an artist. But certainly you have to be a builder. Everything starts from there.

One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again.

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.

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.