The rap on me on the street is the opposite - I'm impractical, I'm more expensive, it's too complicated and I run over budgets, which isn't true. None of that's true and there's plenty of documentation if anybody needs it.

I refuse to work unless I get paid, so I don't get a lot of work sometimes.

Most of our cities built since the war are bland. They're modernist, they're cold, and now architects want to go back to that.

Architecture and any art can transform a person, even save someone. It can for children - for anyone. It still does for me.

I attended a lecture by a gray-haired old man from Finland, who later I discovered was the architect Alvar Aalto. I was very moved. I wasn't interested in architecture, but it was a moving thing I've never forgotten.

Art is about people. I think the discussion about whether architecture is art or not is lamebrain.

As much as we pretend otherwise, we want what's comfortable, and we're afraid of the different. We're afraid of change.