Renzo Piano Quotes

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.

Light has not just intensity, but also a vibration, which is capable of roughening a smooth material, of giving a three-dimensional quality to a flat surface.

If you have total freedom, then you are in trouble. It's much better when you have some obligation, some discipline, some rules. When you have no rules, then you start to build your own rules.

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

When a man is not satisfied with a house where he lives, he becomes an architect

Architecture is art, but art vastly contaminated by many other things. Contaminated in the best sense of the word – fed, fertilised by many things.

You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony

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

Architecture is an imposed art in some ways, imposed upon the public, so people must be sure about what you're doing. You have to be sure about what you're doing.

Knowing how to do things not just with the head, but with the hands as well: this might seem a programmatic and ideological goal. It is not. It is a way of safeguarding creative freedom.

A builder is like a little god - somebody who does things, doesnt just draw things.

I dont remember a single thing in my childhood that was not related in some way to building.

My inspiration came from the land, ... and, of course, from Paul Klee . . . and the poetics of his paintings.

London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design.

When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city ... but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty.

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 Im on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island.

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.

Enjoying art is a personal matter. It's made up by contemplation, silence, abstraction.

I came to architecture from building. Because my father was a builder, everybody was - and is - a builder in my family.

In architecture you should live for 150 years, because you have to learn in the first 75 years.

You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony.

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.

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.

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.

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.