Architecture is not an inspirational business, it's a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that's 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.

If there is one country and its people that have contributed most to western civilisation's man-made world continuously for the last 2000 years, it must surely be Italy.

From the early days of European migration to America, in the 17th Century, the prototype of buildings was based on English precedent, even if mostly translated into the locally available material in abundance: timber.

At the age of 80, I'm becoming a visual artist. This could be my rebirth.

The Romans were not inventors of the supporting arch, but its extended use in vaults and intersecting barrel shapes and domes is theirs.

Borne out of this, starting around the 17th Century was the Baroque era. It is my view that it is one of the architectural peak periods in western civilisation.