"A museum is a spiritual place. People lower their voices when they get close to art." — Mario Botta

Buildings in modern cities have lost their metaphoric aspect. Much contemporary architecture is very fragmented and busy on the outside. It's like a skin or a skull, but you don't know what's inside.

Great architecture of the past was always clear. SFMOMA is still a simple building to understand.

In 1996, I took advantage of some favourable circumstances to propose to the state of the Ticino Canton the foundation of the Academy of Architecture and, with it, an Italian-speaking university in Switzerland.

To me it was fascinating, the idea of going to university and studying a subject - architecture - that I had already faced in building some small houses.