I don't believe in synergy. I believe that things have to be specific to the medium that they're in.

The construction industry likes nothing more than a blank canvas onto which they can impose a brand new building, because that way they can make more money.

When I first started writing in my early 20s it was literary criticism for a very eccentric magazine called Books And Bookmen, which allowed me to write, more or less anything.

In creating a building, architects do think they're making the world a better place. And then they hope to make the world an even better place by making another thing which will be even bigger than the last thing... and it is part of the pathology of being an architect to believe thus, and they do believe it, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was a child. I did want to be a cartographer but that was partly because I liked Ordnance Survey maps and when I used to go to my grandparents' house from Southampton Station one went past the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey.

I don't think things necessarily should have a meaning. If stuff has a meaning then why do [writing] about it? If you're trying to say, 'Tall buildings are great' why not just leave it at that: "Tall buildings are great."

One doesn't mind adverse criticism so long as it isn't stupid.