The world has changed a great deal from when I began 50 years ago. I was very fortunate. There were a lot of opportunities that perhaps don't exist today.

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.

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.

When I am asked what I believe in, I say that I believe in architecture. Architecture is the mother of the arts. I like to believe that architecture connects the present with the past and the tangible with the intangible.

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

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

If I had my druthers, I would do a lot more.