Claudio Silvestrin is considered one of the world’s leading architects, known for his calm, open, intellectual spaces; muted tones; and use of natural materials. In addition to buildings, Silvestrin has designed products that complement his spaces, making use of the same principles.

Born in Switzerland, raised in Italy and based in Milan and London, Silvestrin has designed for Cappellini, Anish Kapoor, Fondazione Sandretto, Giorgio Armani and Kanye West, among many others. Some of his more recent projects include work on a 12th century Italian castle, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin, as well as a myriad of sleek, contemporary restaurant spaces in London. We spoke to Silvestrin to discover more about his opinions on how modern culture is influencing architectural styles, the intersection between art and architecture, as well as what he would most like to design.

ACM: Your work has been acclaimed as being as much art as architecture. Is architecture a vocation for you?

CS: Yes, for me it is. It’s what I feel. It’s not that architecture is a vocation from a logical point of view – it’s a profession. But I’ve always felt architecture was something more, in the way it’s a vocation for some to be a doctor, those who want to heal people. That doesn’t mean all doctors see their profession that way. But I know a few architects feel the way I do. I think it’s a choice you make. It’s a decision, in the way that all of architecture is really a series of decisions – what colour, what material, what detail. The built environment would I think be a better place if architects saw what they did as more of a vocation, but that’s hypothetical.

What brought you to architecture?

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be an artist. I was in London, aged around 18, learning English, and I went to the ICA library in my spare time and borrowed a book of letters by Paul Klee, one of my favourite artists. And in one of those letters he says that the greatest art is architecture. And I can’t explain it, but I had this flash, like lightning, and felt “this is it!”. It was a strong emotion, a sense of illumination, that I should be an architect and see it as a form of art, not as being all about concrete and steel.

You’ve said that one reason we all understand architecture at some level is because it’s all about geometry, and we all have an instinctive understanding of geometry…

Yes, we all understand geometry as a form, no matter where we are on the planet. And architecture is an expression of geometry. We’re also tied to the ground, and architecture is something that’s all around us. It’s not something, like a painting, or a landscape, that you only look at. Architecture has a certain roundness to it – it’s not just what you look at, but what you touch, what you touch with your feet, it’s in front of you, behind you. You’re inside architecture nearly all the time. It has a totality to it that maybe other disciplines don’t have.