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

Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.

Let's put it this way: One can be happy or unhappy in a building. But some buildings make us more depressed than others.

The good is not a category that interests me.

Japan lives with drastic segregation between the sublime, the ugly, and the utterly without qualities. Dominance of the last 2 categories makes mere presence of the first stunning: when beauty 'happens', it is absolutely surprising.

Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important.

When we went in the late 1990s, Nigeria was still in a dictatorship. So we didn't go with a mission. It started really with a sort of blankness and open-endedness.