You don't restore 'The Last Supper' by filling in the missing bits - you preserve. You accept the material that has somehow survived..

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

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 ….

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 may not be the most interesting architect, but I'm still out there and have maintained some position of integrity..

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

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….

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….

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

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

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

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….

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 ….

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….

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….

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 ….

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 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….

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