Architects have to dream. We have to search for our Atlantises, to be explorers, adventurers, and yet to build responsibly and well.

When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.

I don't like the idea that the first preparation when you start to design your building has to put your label. I think this is not fair. It's not fair to the building or to the people, to the client, because every building tells a different story.

A museum is a place where one should lose one's head.

I think people should try to teach young children that these qualities - stubbornness and a capacity to listen - might look like they are opposites, but they are not.

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.