“It was a quarry and then it became more of a construction site. The process was not deciding shadow but letting the light in and letting the view come in”
“Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. It’s about intensive research, really. The concentration is warm and intimate and like the fire inside the earth – intense but not distorted. You can go to a place, really feel it in your heart. It’s actually a beautiful feeling.”
“You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work....But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: ‘This is beautiful.’ That is Architecture. Art enters in.”
“Here we will build a monument dedicated to nature and we will make it our lives’ purpose.”
“ From the outside, the building looks like a lamp. It absorbs the changing light of the sky, the haze of the lake, it reflects light and colour and gives an intimation of its inner life according to the angle of vision, the daylight and the weather.”
“One person opposite another, arranged in circles in sweeping, suspended arcs around soaring crystal pyramids.”
“Remember the impression of good architecture ... namely, that it expresses a thought. You would like to follow it with a gesture.”
“Our transformation of the Reichstag is rooted in four related issues: the Bundestag’s significance as a democratic forum, an understanding of history, a commitment to public accessibility and a vigorous environmental agenda.”
“architecture is an art….the same as painting is an art or sculpture is an art. Yet, architecture moves a step beyond painting and sculpture because it is more than using materials. Architecture responds to functional outputs and environmental factors. Yet, fundamentally, it is important for me to stress the art in architecture to bring harmony.”
“The form of this building was inspired by the vaults of Seville’s expansive cathedral – I wanted to create a ‘cathedral without walls’ that would be ‘democratic’ – and also by the handsome trees already in the square.”
“The centre is like a huge spaceship made of glass, steel and coloured tubing that landed unexpectedly in the heart of the Paris, and where it would very quickly set deep roots.”
“The one thing we knew about this age is it’s all about change, if there’s one constant, it’s change ... So we said that we’d make massive floors, which were the size of two football pitches with no vertical interruptions, structure on the outside, mechanical service on the outside, people’s movement on the outside and theoretically you can do anything you want on those floors.”
