In my opinion, as an engineer, a bridge is the most difficult thing you can do. You are not working in the direction of gravity but against it - so the problem opposes the solution.
I always considered the role of teaching to be very noble and relevant.
Valencia is a pure Mediterranean city; it is a city like Naples or Palermo, like Rome a little bit. Walking in the old town has a little bit of the flavor of the old city of Rome.
A railway station is something that can generate a city.
I understand and accept criticisms of my work, provided they are done with professional criteria and arguments.
The city of Rio de Janeiro is setting an example to the world of how to recover quality urban spaces through drastic intervention and the creation of cultural facilities such as the Museum of Tomorrow.
Imagine for a second that the Golden Gate had not been built. This place in the San Francisco Bay would be one of the many beautiful places along the Pacific Coast - but that's all. Once you put the bridge there, you distinguish it from any other place in the world.
Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalise cities both artistically and functionally.
I have always tried to create bridges that are more than a connecting structure - places in their own right.
Airports need an identity, a main hall that defines the dignity of the space and allows people to move fluidly throughout its ancillary parts.
It is an exceptional event to build a cathedral - it must withstand several lifetimes.
What architecture does is what a coat does for our body. It wraps us.
There is so much vulgarity in the everyday, that when somebody has the pretension to do something extraordinary for the community, then you have to suffer.
The Freedom Tower has a cost overrun. A significant cost overrun.
I am an engineer, not just an architect, so I've always been motivated by technique or technology. As soon as technology moves just a little bit, it changes architecture.
My private work is touched by this destiny of understanding that architecture and engineering have a social character and can serve the community.
A bridge is born of necessity, but it must establish its own identity. It should harmonize with its surroundings, and the design must transcend the purely local and transform the setting.
I became a fanatic of the architecture of Le Corbusier and I visited almost all his buildings and read all his books. Only later on did I discover that all the things that impressed me in his books, particular his ideology, he had picked up from Auguste Perret.
I always admired the U.S. as the country of the space shuttle, of technological achievement.
The reality is that throughout my career I've tackled projects in Spain that I'm proud of.
