That has been another interesting discovery: that basically a city [Lagos] could recover from a really deep, deep, deep pit..

Manhattanism is the one urbanistic ideology that has fed, from its conception, on the splendors and miseries of the metropolitan condition—hyper-dens….

When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more p….

We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very char….

It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces..

The great problem of the concert hall is that the shoebox is the ideal shape for acoustics but that no architect worth their names wants to build a s….

Journalists seem mostly interested in what brand of shoes I wear..

The acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs..

Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things..

Architecture is a rare collective profession: it's always exercised by groups. There is an essential modesty, which is a complete contradiction to th….

The people from the suburbs are bringing along their suburban values: cleanliness, orderliness, safety - dullness, in other words. As a result, urban….

Without a tighter union, Europe will disintegrate.

In a script, you have to link various episodes together, you have to generate suspense and you have to assemble things - through editing, for example….

You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society..

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

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. W….

Most old cities are now sclerotic machines that dispense known qualities in ever-greater quantities, instead of laboratories of the uncertain. Only t….

Let's put it this way: One can be happy or unhappy in a building. But some buildings make us more depressed than others..

Our society can no longer tolerate ugliness. You see that in cars, sofas and women. [But] ugliness also has a right to exist..

I like fashion, whether or not it's overpriced, because it creates a sense of the sublime with relatively few means..

Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we s….