What the people are within, the buildings express without.

I needed to understand the spirit of a tall building, what makes it important, what should I try to achieve in a tall building. It became a very interesting problem, something that I like very much.

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...

I don't care what people call me, labels have the negative value of making smaller boundaries for people.

The thing is that I have a really intense, almost compulsive need to record. But it doesn't end there, because what I record is somehow transformed into a creative thing. There is a continuity....

I plead for conservation of human culture, which is much more fragile than nature herself. We needn't destroy other cultures with the force of our own.

The function of arts centers goes far beyond being places for performance. They might not be explicitly religious, but they are civic and social spaces.

I have a real survivor's instinct.

A room is not a room without natural light.

We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us.

If we had this back, and in full measure; if society were infused by it, through and through, and men lived its life, and in its life, philosophy would take care of itself and the nature of our...

Only when inspired to go beyond consciousness by some extraordinary insight does beauty manifest unexpectedly.

I was born in Argentina, June 13, 1943. I brought up my parents very well, so they let me come to America to study at Princeton University.

Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

I have been criticized rather strenuously by painters and sculptors for not incorporating their work in our buildings.

Many tools are indispensable for my work, from a utility knife to parametric-modeling software, like Digital Project. But it's important not to confuse the tool for the content, as some designers...

Cities are 2% of the earth's crust, but they are 50% of the world's population.

What if we treat the high-rise like a mountain, or we have gardens in the sky, or waterfalls? I think that's the most challenging thing I want to try in my architecture.

Green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart.

In the 1970s, New York was known as a place of great artistic production. Slowly, my city went from a place of production to a place of consumption.

I'm really a fighter against modernism equaling brutalism.

Maybe our work appeals to some people more than others. But the opportunities that I present to my colleagues are completely uninfluenced by gender, race, sexual orientation, or religion.

When I opened Chanel in London, they were happy. People would go, 'Oh, I just came in to see it. It's so beautiful.' And you leave with a positive attitude toward the brand. Now, you don't really get...

Rarely do we see immediate use of innovative technologies. I believe that the future is built by small pieces that add up.

Ginza! Where I've done two Chanel towers and Louis Vuitton and Dior stores. I just feel at home there.

Koishikawa Korakuen Garden - one of Tokyo's oldest Japanese gardens, and one of the best spots for viewing the cherry blossoms.

When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.

People in Shanghai make a lot more money than the farmers in the rice paddies. The rice-paddy farmers are not buying Louis Vuitton bags, but the upwardly mobile ones in Shanghai, who are all working...

The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.

It is wonderful to be in the country in a glass house, because no matter what happens out there, you're nice and safe, you know, cuddled in your little bed, and there it is, raging storms, snowing -...