My first experiences as an architect were threaded together by a search for lightness. It’s very simple. When you are young, you try to do the opposite of what your father’s been doing. My father was making buildings with sand, concrete, and bricks. I wanted to do something that was the opposite of that, but I don’t think looking for lightness was intended only as rebellion. I instinctively took pleasure in light things, and working with lightness might be a bit more poetic, like working with transparency. Lightness and transparency are very close friends. And also light. Just light. Light is one of the most important materials in construction. Certainly the desire for lightness came from many things, maybe including a kind of challenge to do things with few materials. The bicycle is a beautiful object because you can understand it, you can see the forces, how it works. It’s a lightweight structure...
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