It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You can't build a great building on a weak foundation. You must have a solid foundation if you're going to have a strong superstructure.
And a building must be like a human being. It must have a wholeness about it, something that is very important.
The loftier the building, the deeper must the foundation be laid.
If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are inspirational.
A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.
If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.
My architecture tends to be legible, light and flexible. You can read it. You look at a building, and you can see how it is constructed. I put the structure outside.
To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I'm working on the foundation.
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.
In other words, each piece of the building must look as though it was designed for that particular building.