Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder. And that wonder is really what has created the greatest cities, the greatest spaces that we have had. And I think that is indeed what architecture is. It is a story. By the way, it is a story that is told through its hard materials. But it is a story of effort and struggle against improbabilities. If you think of the great buildings, of the cathedrals, of the temples, of the pyramids, of pagodas, of cities in India and beyond, you think of how incredible this is that that was realized not by some abstract idea, but by people.
I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.