Lagos Was Not Very Inviting Even To

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 Elses Hands.

I Studied In London In 1968. Our School Had A Separate Department Of Tropical Architecture. Of Course It Was Totally Unfashionable, Partly Because Nobody Wanted To Think About Colonialism, But Basically What You Learned There Was That, Ok, The Sun Is Here, So You Should Create Natural Ventilation Here - An Unbelievable Amount Of Really Sound Principles That Have Been Completely Abandoned, So Now Everything Is Air Conditioned With Big Machines.

It Was A Book [george Packer Written On Our Presence In Nigeria] That Was Killed By The Response Of Other People. Which Sounds Quite Cowardly, Perhaps, But It Was The First Manifestation Of What Is Currently A Really Big Issue: How Political Correctness Defines The Limits Of What You Can Do. In That Sense, It Was Super-exciting And Maybe The Most Magical Project We Did, But At The Same Time Fraught With Mixed Feelings.

Designs Are Increasingly Winning Competitions Because They Are Literally Green, And Because Somewhere They Feature A Small Windmill.

A Building Has At Least Two Lives - The One Imagined By Its Maker And The Life It Lives Afterward - And They Are Never The Same.