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load of reality, you can’t really measure it in those terms. Instead, it’s the most spiritual of arts, and carries its own significance and its own meaning.


9 Music is a very good analogy as to how architecture communicates It’s not only meant for your head but for all of you. It’s embodied. It isn’t just a message on a façade à la Venturi, or à la Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une Pipe. It’s very different.


10 You bring who you are as a human being to a project You’re not a technician or a bureaucrat. You’re creating something human, something social. So you immerse yourself in literature,


poetry, the plastic arts, music… and all that, the deeper background to who you are, informs what you’re doing. It’s not possible for me to do architecture in any other way. Otherwise, it’s just AI.


11 An interesting shape doesn’t make something iconic To me, that’s just glossy, superficial fashion. Being iconic is something else – the presence of something that communicates something important to every person, something that is moving.


Left At the World Trade Center, Libeskind didn’t start with the developmental plans or complex technical issues, but with the story of those who were killed there


12 Projects that aren’t built are never a waste Every project, even if it remains just on paper, incarnates in itself something incredibly meaningful. I never think it’s a lost work. I don’t see architecture as a transaction between you and the client, or between you and the building. It’s a process of revealing something. And a drawing can reveal something as profound as a building,


sometimes more profound. That’s why people collect drawings. There are no wasted drawings by Michelangelo. No wasted drawings by Palladio, no wasted drawings anywhere. It’s not a waste. They might be realised in some unexpected way, in time.


Often projects that don’t happen teach


you so much and give you so much more adrenaline for the next project. Wasted time is only for people who are cynical and see architecture as a business. Ten, of course, you’ve wasted your time. But if you consider architecture as an art, there is no waste.


13 I’m not an architect who dreams of doing fantasy projects I’ve never been one of those architects who wants to build, for example, an airport or a museum. It’s never healthy to say ‘I want to do “X”’. It’s simply about supplying what is required for the project. Ten it becomes interesting.


14 Experience to me is a limitation People always want experience. But once you know too much, you have to overcome what you know. So the biggest challenge is how to de-experience yourself and become less experienced so that you can enter the field in a more naïve way. Imagination really is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited at any one point, but imagination really encompasses the whole world.


15 I never think what I’m doing is work You have to be in love with what you’re doing, with your clients and the meaning of the project. I never think ‘Tank God, it’s Friday’. I’m so lucky to be doing something I love. It’s so much fun and joyous.


PHOTO: STEFAN RUIZ


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