When I began designing machines I also began to think that these objects, which sit next to each other and around people, can influence not only physical conditions but also emotions. They can touch the nerves, the blood, the muscles, the eyes and the moods of people.

I make no special difference between architecture and design, they are two different stages of invention.

My furniture is an exercise in architecture or architectural mood.

I design places to be in and, even if existence is not definable, I know a few recurrent motifs: for instance, to look out of the window, to see the sun going through it or filtered by a veranda, to live in high or low rooms, wide or narrow doors, corners to shelter in without having to look outside, to possess a terrace to grow plants on, to go long or short distances - places that don't tell you what they are or places where you just look. I try to design them so that the people living in them can be aware of these different moments.

It is important to realize that whatever we do or design has iconographic references, it comes from somewhere; any form is always metaphorical, never totally metaphysical; it is never a 'destiny' but always a fact with some kind of historical reference. To put an object on a base means to monumentalize it, to make everyone aware it exists.

...there is no doubt something will be done sooner or later to enable us to put on a house every day, just as we put on clothes or choose a book to read or a theater to go to, like choosing a day to be lived, within the limits grated by other destinies or chances.

It may occur to someone working in design to produce objects that are of no use to industrial civilization as it is set up at present, but that serve to release creative energies, to suggest possibilities, to stimulate awareness, to bring people's feet back onto the planet... and it may also occur to him to use consumerism and adapt it to this idea so that it becomes a liberating force rather than a conditioning one. All this is difficult, very difficult, and one knows, but that doesn't mean that we can't try...

Decoration can be a state of mind, an unusual perception, a ritual whisper.

If you think you're meeting your destiny on the other side of a door you may not be interested in its design.