Criticism per se does not worry me. I've always solicited it as part of the design process.

Lagos has also had a particular effect on my career. I was there early, and although it was a courageous step to go there and invest on this scale - I went there maybe 20 times - it's also been also super-controversial. There's an old school of thought that somebody like me has no place to go there.Because of colonialism and so on.

Lagos was not very inviting even to Lagosians. It was considered a no-go zone, almost in its entirety.

Nigeria [in 1990] was all rumour, an unbelievable amount of rumour - largely about crime and almost mythical manifestations of evil.

If you have this reputation you can sit back and endure it, or you can try to do things with it.

The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction.

Infrastructure is much more important than architecture.