Modernist architecture and town planning is inimical to human beings ... based on the Darwinian concept that evolution is open ended, that there must always be something new and better.

I don't build because I am an architect. I can make true architecture because I do not build.

The problem was Le Corbusier was a genius and an enormous artist, but he tried to resolve problems to which there is no solution. So the idea to demolish the centre of Paris in order to adapt it to the car - he drew it! - is something not even the most bloody dictators conceived.

If a dictator takes up my ideas, the resulting town will survive the political system that commissioned it and stand as a social good. Besides, modernism rather than classicism has dominated the architecture of totalitarian regimes of both the left and right.

As is the case with all good things in life - love, good manners, language, cooking - personal creativity is required only rarely.

Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop.

Horizontal and vertical sprawl... are the dinosaurs of an ending fossil-fuel age of synthetic culture.