I cannot look at modern buildings without thinking of historical ones.

You cannot use the democratic process for the procurement of excellence.

What happened in 2008 stopped people in their tracks. People stopped looking at their homes simply as commodities to exploit and starting thinking about how they might personalise that space and make them less bland and more autobiographical, and that's healthy, I think.

I don't enjoy living in a white box flooded with light. I like shadows, small spaces, old furniture.

The thing that I champion is sustainability. My terror is that suddenly we see it as a luxury, not an essential. That's a danger.

Building a house from scratch in the middle of a field is a bit like building a prototype car. As with all prototypes, if you're building a car you usually have the luxury of producing several prototypes before you arrive at the production line version - so the opportunity for changing things is quite rich.