57 Quotes by Renzo Piano

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.

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

You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony

In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.

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

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.

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.

In some way, people believe that if you are permeable, if you are a good listener, you don't have the quality of somebody with a firm attitude. This is what, fundamentally, I got from my mother.

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