David chipperfield

I do very little industrial design. I'm asked a lot, but I certainly don't see myself as an industrial designer.

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

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, marketing and 'accessibility', a word that usually...

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

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

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

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 it's seen as the catalyst for urban regeneration...

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

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

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 inspirational.