Recently I was in Bernalda my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

I just went off for two months traveling around Europe on a motorcycle and pretty much turned my phone off. I did 5 000 miles with my dad. We went through Holland Germany Austria Slovenia Croatia Bosnia Montenegro Italy... and then I did Spain and France by myself.

Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty it has it all.

After about the first Millennium Italy was the cradle of Romanesque architecture which spread throughout Europe much of it extending the structural daring with minimal visual elaboration.

Italy is full of historical buildings. And Europe holds a great history of philosophy from Greece until today. I read all those books and see these buildings and I think of where I stand when I design my architecture.

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone in a single cottage on the top of a mountain a mile from any habitation? He replied that Providence was his next-door neighbor.