In some way, people believe that if you are permeable, if you are a good listener, you don’t have the quality of somebody with a firm attitude. This is what, fundamentally, I got from my mother.
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.
Every year I spend one month just sailing, but I still work when I’m on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island.
Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don’t read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.
You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony.
London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design.
In architecture you should live for 150 years, because you have to learn in the first 75 years.
In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything – from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up – grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.
I came to architecture from building. Because my father was a builder, everybody was – and is – a builder in my family.
Enjoying art is a personal matter. It’s made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction.
I don’t want to be romantic, but one of the most important things is to have happy buildings… it’s like having a family with a lot of children.