Often architects work too hard trying to make their buildings look different. It’s like we’re actors let loose on a stage, all speaking our parts at the same time in our own private languages without an audience.

If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are inspirational.

I spent more than ten years working on the Neues Museum. It was a wonderful experience, an example of real collaboration between architects, conservationists, curators, client, politicians, the media, and the public. Discussions, even when difficult, were always about ideas. Ideas matter to Germans. They're a reflective people. That's attractive.

I may not be the most interesting architect, but I'm still out there and have maintained some position of integrity.

You don't restore 'The Last Supper' by filling in the missing bits - you preserve. You accept the material that has somehow survived.

Most architects work in ­studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and ­historical ­research were irrelevant.

Britain gets the architecture it deserves. We don’t value architecture, we don’t take it seriously, we don’t want to pay for it and the architect isn’t trusted.