Photo: Diana Pfammatter

Early on, I had two great masters: an artist, Joseph Beuys, and an architect, Aldo Rossi. With them I began to lay the intellectual and formal foundations of my architecture. Rossi was in our time the best-known professor at the school, and he had plenty of charisma. He inspired us a lot, especially with his drawings, writings, and talks, even more than with his built work. He was an incredible man, and has definitely been one of the main influences in our journey. We didn’t like the architecture that was going up at that moment: the Holleins and Stirlings were never to my liking, nor to Pierre’s, and that’s why we were looking for an alternative. Beuys was different, a man from the north vis-à-vis the Mediterranean culture represented by Rossi. Each one in his own way showed us a possible path. We didn’t pursue a strictly Rossian or Beuysian path. In the end, we embarked on a voyage of our own, but both of them left a mark on us, for sure...[+]