Renzo Piano Quotes & Sayings

“There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It's the art of putting all your energy into one thing; it's the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.”

“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.”

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

“A builder is like a little god - somebody who does things, doesn't just draw things.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I don't remember a single thing in my childhood that was not related in some way to building.”