Lagos was the ultimate dysfunctional city - but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency.

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

The word 'celebrity' and the word 'architect' are basically incompatible.

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 Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies for the distinction of one block from another. The Grid's two-dimensional discipline also creates undreamt-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy. The Grid defines a new balance between control and de-control in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos.

We live in an almost perfect stillness and work with incredible urgency.

Architecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance.