Rome has not seen a modern building in more than half a century. It is a city frozen in time.

Whiteness allows the architectural ideas to be understood most clearly - the difference between opacity and transparency, solid and void, structure and surface. These things are more perceptible in a white environment. They have a greater clarity.

To be an architect has been a life-long dream. Little did I know when asked at the age of 14 'what do you want to do when you grow up?' I said I wanted to be an architect. After 50 years I am still learning all what that means. Working together with so many people has been enormously gratifying. Being an architect means being a member of a fantastic team.

Architecture which enters into a symbiosis with light does not merely create form in light, by day and at night, but allow light to become form.

The responsibility of an architect is to create a sense of order, a sense of place, a sense of relationship.

It's important to understand differences in scale and environment.

For me [ Giovanni Lorenzo ] Bernini, [Francesco ] Borromini, and [Donato] Bramante have been as significant as Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn. I still marvel at their works, which have a quality and a timelessness that I seek to have in our projects.