“As an architect, you have to provide a shelter to enjoy art. And you h...” — Renzo Piano Quote

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.

When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.

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.

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

The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.

For the first project I did in North America, I was asked as an artist, not as an architect, to collaborate on a big development in the heart of Toronto. I was working with other artists and was in charge of giving form to a street, and I proposed a galleria.

There are so many constraints on the architect that public buildings almost never feel free or enjoyable.

My father was a German architect and graphic designer, who travelled all over the world, teaching teachers on how to teach. On one such visit to the Max Mueller Bhavan in Delhi, he met my mother.