Renzo Piano Quotes

A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.

The level of detail and craft is something that's inscribed within the original design concept. And so when I begin to draw, I know what kind of detailing I want the building to have.

To make architecture with any real value is a massive challenge.

Nothing requires the architect's care more than the due proportions of buildings.

I wanted a real profession. And I'd always been interested in architecture and in design and in, really, what makes things work. And understanding what's kind of behind the walls and why things stand up and some things don't.

I am going to design... a Station after my own fancy; that is, with engineering roofs, etc.

I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?

I am but an architectural composer.

Nine out of nine architects start with a sketch, and then they say, 'What should we make it out of?' I start from the bottom up - what should it be made out of - and then I worry about what should it look like. The material, the color of the material, the way it feels, and the way you respond to it is every bit as valid as the form or the shape.

With everything that I design, from a church to a plate to skyscraper to a spoon. I am always thinking about voluptuous volumes and spaces.

When I concentrate on a specific site or place for which I am going to design a building, I try to plumb its depths, its form, its history and its sensuous qualities.

Architecture begins where engineering ends.

I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope.

When drawings of the main buildings I have designed in the last five years are juxtaposed, the fact that they all involve the pursuit of certain configurations is obvious to anyone.

I work a little bit like a sculptor. When I start, my first idea for a building is with the material. I believe architecture is about that. It's not about paper, it's not about forms. It's about space and material.

All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.

We refuse to recognize problems of form, but only problems of building. Form is not the aim of our work, but only the result. Form, by itself, does not exist. Form as an aim is formalism; and that we reject.

When I design buildings, I think of the overall composition, much as the parts of a body would fit together. On top of that, I think about how people will approach the building and experience that space.

The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution.

I studied to be an architect. And I find tremendous similarities between building a company and the design process. Businesses have to do their planning on the fly in a fashion similar to an architect sketching.

I don't build because I am an architect. I can make true architecture because I do not build.

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

Architecture doesn't come from theory. You don't think your way through a building.

As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art. And you have to love art. It's like when you make a concert hall. You must love music. This is the reason why you make the space, to enjoy music - making a space for art is the same thing.