I don't think architecture is radical. How can something that takes years and costs millions be radical?.

We see buildings in Britain mostly as freestanding objects. They are not meant to have a dialogue with anything around them, or with history, or with….

I do quite like Gehry's Guggenheim. But where in Bilbao it's seen as an outgrowth of years of investment in urban design and engineering, in Britain ….

Britain loves a bargain, but you don't get good, lasting architecture on the cheap..

It is difficult to separate oneself from one's design moralities..

The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it..

Architecture has curled up in a ball and it's about itself. It has found itself either as a freakshow, where you're not sure if it's good or bad but ….

It used to be presumed that if you weren't at your desk working, you weren't working. But we said, why can't we make a workplace where casual meeting….

Often architects work too hard trying to make their buildings look different. It’s like we’re actors let loose on a stage, all speaking our parts at ….

I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a PhD in comparative literature so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books whic….

There is a danger when every building has to look spectacular; to look like it is changing the world. I don't care how a building looks if it means s….

I spent more than ten years working on the Neues Museum. It was a wonderful experience, an example of real collaboration between architects, conserva….

I think that the point of being an architect is to help raise the experience of everyday living, even a little. Putting a window where people would r….

I'm suspicious of the idea of architects acting like business executives, brand managers, or purveyors of luxury goods..

Seeing architecture differently from the way you see the rest of life is a bit weird. I believe one should be consistent in all that one does, from t….

If you look at a building by Mies van der Rohe, it might look very simple, but up close, the sheer quality of construction, materials and thought are….

In Britain, we've tended to replace the kind of architectural culture valued in much of Europe with an in-flight magazine lifestyle - all branding, m….

Most architects work in ­studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and ­historical ­research were irrelevant..

Britain gets the architecture it deserves. We don’t value architecture, we don’t take it seriously, we don’t want to pay for it and the architect isn….

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. I….

I suppose I'm trying to build an architecture that's as timeless as possible, although we're all creatures of our age..