That has been my entire life story, running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated.

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 started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone else's hands.

There are essentially two possibilities. One is to be, shall we say, an average architect and do the same thing everywhere. The other is to let yourself be inspired and even changed by the unique qualities of the place where you’re building. We always try to take the second approach.

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. It’s exactly the same in architecture. Architects also put together spatial episodes to make sequences.

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

Prada is extremely directed in terms of communicating what they like and what they don’t like. That is actually extremely pleasant because it clarifies very easily what you can do and what you need to do.

Architecture is a rare collective profession: it’s always exercised by groups. There is an essential modesty, which is a complete contradiction to the notion of a star.

People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that’s both liberating and alarming.

When shopping was still connected to the street it was also an intensification and articulation of the street. Now it has become utterly independent – contained, controlled, surveyed.

But now sustainability is such a political category that it’s getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.