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

Every year I spend one month just sailing, but I still work when Im on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island.

Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures , culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood.

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.

A museum is a place where one should lose one's head.

My inspiration came from the land, ... and, of course, from Paul Klee . . . and the poetics of his paintings.

One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again.