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

When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city ... but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty.

Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures , culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood.

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.

London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design.

Light has not just intensity, but also a vibration, which is capable of roughening a smooth material, of giving a three-dimensional quality to a flat surface.

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