Studing jewelry gives you an incredible technical background. If you can work on very, very small things, then, I think, typically you find it easier to go bigger rather than the other way around. I think a lot of architects have struggled with small things. Whereas if you start small, it's easier to get bigger.

So if I design it and then go away, it's still living somewhere and it still exists by itself without me.

You know some people say that you make watches or perfume bottles, it's all different things.

You know that's history, that's why some people say that my stuff is retro, but I don't agree.

I'm so immersed in my little world that I don't often sit back and pay attention to what's going on around me. It truly stuns me when people recognize me. Obviously, I'm not a film star, but even at a design exhibition or art exhibition, if someone comes up to me, I'm sort of taken aback. I don't think of myself like that. But if I can have an effect on young designers, that's great - particularly young designers coming from Australia. Europeans grew up with design. The rest of us lived on tidbits of information.

If somebody asked me about my inspiration I would say that it's not the peopleand it's not the things, it's travel and experiencing different environments.

Doing anything in Japan as a sort of architecture - related project is just fantastic because they do everything so perfectly and so quickly. It's unlike anywhere else in the world.