– To me, home is: …..being familiar with a place. And this has nothing to do with my biography. Sometimes, I quickly feel at home in a place, sometimes not even after years have passed. A place, in which I feel really at home, is a place which continues to surprise me with new perceptions. This is what I am looking for in a “home”.

– To me, design is: …..full of mystery. I love design and its history throughout the 20th century, and the freeing of objects from their nondescript, conservative gestalt. “Architectural design” is something else though. I love the old European towns, their streets and buildings, including those of the late 19th century. They are saturated with the experiences made by their inhabitants. They are rich in details and present us with their very existence, the same as old people to whom we feel close. Contemporary architecture is hard pushed to handle this – as is my own architecture.

– A design project that I love: …..is Sant’ Ivo alla Sapienza in Rome. A magnificent baroque church, built by Francesco Borromini around 1660. A mysterious ensemble of spiritual and scientific elements, splendidly incorporated into the existing structure of a university building. Time and again, I look at the spiral lantern of Sant’ Ivo from my terrace in Rome and never tire of looking at it.

– Some aspects of our work: ….our designs are not the result of a traditional design process but the synthesis of a debate on a specic programme and site. We discuss it in a very small group and keep it on that level until we know what we shall suggest. Sketches, drawings, 3-D models, all that comes later, and until then it only exists in our imagination. We love to work on existing buildings. To ret a house feels very good and we fully concentrate on the existing structure.

This also means we are satised with an anonymous contribution, sometimes just a kind of repair. We are not keen on leaving any traces of our intervention or even enhance such a gesture by an antagonistic design contribution that marks the difference between the existing and our new addition.

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