I design for the use of a building and the place and for the people who use it... the reputation for arrogance comes because when work is offered to me, I look whether I can find a genuine interest in quality.

There was a time when I experienced architecture without thinking about it.

I grew up in a craftsman's home, where things were done with our own hands. I did cabinetmaking for four years and I hated it.

You feel a certain way in a glass or concrete or limestone building. It has an effect on your skin - the same with plywood or veneer, or solid timber. Wood doesn't steal energy from your body the way glass and concrete steal heat. When it's hot, a wood house feels cooler than a concrete one, and when it's cold, the other way around.

Architecture is exposed to life. If its body is sensitive enough, it can assume a quality that bears witness to past life.

My buildings should have an emotional core –a space which, in itself, has an emotional nice feeling.

If you're lucky, and a building succeeds, the real product has many more dimensions than you can ever imagine. You have the sun, the light, the rain, the birds, the feel.