I work anywhere between three and 10 years on a project, depending on the size. My lifetime is finite. Therefore, I have to look carefully at how many projects I want to put into my lifetime.
I design for the use of a building and the place and for the people who use it... the reputation for arrogance comes because when work is offered to me, I look whether I can find a genuine interest in quality.
The bottom line may be that my inventing buildings is, indeed, a very private kind of activity. But it's done to be shared. It is comforting and consoling. From the reactions I get I can see I'm not doing something strange.
I need a close contact to the client, whoever it is, and a commitment of the client to go out and do a process together. I want to do the best for him. I need his respect and his patience. I want to work with a sophisticated person who's interested in a good building and not in my name.
The first 10 years of my professional life had only to do with running away from my father. He was a wonderful cabinet-maker, and me being the eldest son, I had to take over his shop, his profession and so on and so on. I tried to escape by going to art school and then going on to industrial design and then interior design.
There is still a real need for good quality architecture, not paper architecture, but the real stuff.
If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.
I'm not mainly interested in what buildings mean as symbols or vehicles for ideas.
My first buildings, when I was about 30, were rejected for aesthetic reasons.
I've built two wooden houses near Vals. I built them for my wife. Those were private projects.
I can't be bought with money. If someone calls me and asks me to work for them for three or four years, and they'll pay me well to build their vacation home, I ask myself why I should work three or four years on something like that.
If I look at history, it seems that most wars and most cruel things have been done by men and not by women.
