Renzo Piano Quotes

Architecture is by definition a very collaborative process.

My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city.

I have accomplished a lot, but it didn't happen overnight for me. I was 35 when I got the show, and had been working professionally for 15 years. It would be a lot weirder if I were in my early 20s and stumbled into it.

I practised as an architect for 10 years. I qualified in 1973 with a fellowship diploma of architecture. World Series Cricket gave me the freedom to go out and pursue architecture.

Architecture is invention.

I don't think architecture is radical. How can something that takes years and costs millions be radical?

I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.

Architecture students are generally given theoretical projects, often located at distant locations, and told to come up with a design.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

I'm working on a school of architecture in China. It's rare that an architect gets to design a school of architecture, and here I get to do it. I'm so pleased that they asked me.

Some people think architecture is about the genius sketch; I don't. Great architecture is a collaboration among a lot of people over a long period of time.

People outside the profession of architecture perhaps often lack the understanding of how their physical environment comes into being. What are the processes, the concerns and considerations? What are the parameters that shape the world around them?

I couldn't do everything in the first or second day; it took me years to be able to get to the achievement that I've had. I wasn't perfect from the beginning.

Architects like to work in a problematic environment.

It takes time and experience to make a person.

The practice of architecture is the most delightful of all pursuits. Also, next to agriculture, it is the most necessary to man. One must eat, one must have shelter. Next to religious worship itself, it is the spiritual handmaiden of our deepest convictions.

The architect holds much knowledge, but is not a specialist. Especially with the computer and technology, the amount of knowledge an architect possesses keeps on growing.

I'd never known of an architect as a young man. I think there was only one architect in Tucuman.

I love buildings that aren't purpose-built.

One of the things that is particularly precious about working at Apple is that many of us on the design team have worked together for 15-plus years, and there's a wonderful thing about learning as a group. A fundamental part of that is making mistakes together.

When he was eighteen, my dad went off to college to become an architect.

It's been 32 years of learning to communicate. We have had ups and downs.

As many an architect will tell you, human behavior changes according to the environment.

It is important to realize that the process of 'fostering' a passion takes trial and error. It takes experience; you cannot do it all in your head. And it takes a long time.

We forget the importance of engineering, but it's been used to design everything from St. Paul's Cathedral to The Shard.