I think you need to, as an architect, understand the essence of a place and create a building that feels like it resonates with the culture of a place. So my buildings in India or in Kansas City or in Arkansas or in Singapore, they come out different because the places are so different.

The greatest satisfaction, I think, is when a building opens and the public possesses it and you cut the umbilical cord and you see it taking on its own life. There’s no greater satisfaction.

Architecture is not about building the impossible, which we can do if we have enough money and enough tools and enough computers. It is about building what is appropriate and about attaining beauty through such an approach. I describe this premise as 'inherent buildability', and I believe it is central to what I do.

We are producing urban places which are disjointed and disconnected and not worthy of our civilisation

Architecture has joined the world of fashion, but fashion is passing and architecture is timeless.

This is the contradictory desire in our utopia. We want to live in a small community with which we can identify and yet we want all the facilities of the city of millions of people. We want to have very intense urban experiences and yet we want the open space right next to us.

Beauty connotes humanity. We call a natural object beautiful because we see that its form expresses fitness, the perfect fulfillment of function.