London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design.

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.

If you have total freedom, then you are in trouble. It's much better when you have some obligation, some discipline, some rules. When you have no rules, then you start to build your own rules.

Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity.

Knowing how to do things not just with the head, but with the hands as well: this might seem a programmatic and ideological goal. It is not. It is a way of safeguarding creative freedom.

London is one of the most civilised places in the world for the procedure of making architecture and urban design.

As an architect you are a builder. You are of course more than a builder. You need to be a militant, you have to be a poet, you have to be a visionary, you have to be an artist. But certainly you have to be a builder. Everything starts from there.