Born in Rome in 1951, he graduated in architecture at the University of Stuttgart and obtained his doctorate there in 1977. He worked at the IBA in Berlin in the 1980s, taught at Harvard, directed Domus and the German Museum of Architecture in Frankfurt. From 1994 to 2016 he held the chair of History of City Design at the ETH Zurich. He founded his own architecture studio in 1981 in Milan. Since 2010 he has been co-owner of Baukontor Zurich with Jens Bohm. His most recent book is Bedeutsame Belanglosigkeiten. Kleine Dinge im Stadtraum (Small objects in urban space), published by Wagenbach in Berlin and soon to be published in Italian by Bollati Boringhieri, among his most important architectures are the office building on the Novartis Campus, for which he is also responsible for the masterplan, and the office and store building on Schiffbauzplatz, Zurich.