“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.”

“Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill.”

“There's nothing Dutch about my architecture.”

“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.”

“Escape from the architecture ghetto is one of the major drivers and has been from the very beginning.”

“Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture.”

“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.”

“What is now called 'green architecture' is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them.”

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

“Infrastructure is much more important than architecture.”

“We felt it was very important for an entity like CCTV to make its presence felt... To generate a space and to define a space, that is the main thing.”