Quotes

When it comes to construction documents, then you have to design by computer, because the procedure is mathematical, is digital. You are still a craftsman, except that your tool is getting more sharp. Architecture is the most imposing art, but in the end it’s about beauty, it’s about truth, and it is unattainable! We don’t impose a personal stamp; we may impose our skill, our coherence. I love lightness; transparency is coherence. We have a sense of inadequacy, when you are just about to grab the vision you have, you face an immense gap, you find that you arms are too short. You only understand when the building is finished. A new building, even if it is beautiful it needs time. Even a classic at its time it was modern, modernity is a funny concept, you don’t really know what is good what is wrong. This is the problem of architecture, it is rational, but it is also very much about intuition. Intuition when you are young it has not been informed by experience, that is why hands are so important, to metabolize, so it seems the gesture of the hands are closer to intuition than to the brain. Every place has a little genius! The building is a presence… They sing only when they have a soul. Still, poetry lasts more than a stone.

Renzo Piano