42 Quotes by David Chipperfield

It is difficult to separate oneself from one's design moralities.

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 rather than the icing on the cake.

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

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?

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

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

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 means dumbing-down.

A building is no good if someone's got to explain to you why it's good. You can't say you don't know enough about architecture - that's ridiculous. It's got to work on many levels.