I think it’s really important to use your hands and get close to materials. To be up close to real things like rain and mud; to have contact with nature.

I think it’s really important to use your hands and get close to materials. To be up close to real things like rain and mud; to have contact with nature.

I would think twice about designing stuff for which there was no need and which didn’t endure.

I think there’s a tendency for modern man to become dominated by gadgets and machines, taking us further and further away from the things I’ve been talking about.

Well the most successful of course was this Polypropylene chair.

I think and hope there are far more people aware of the need to look after our future.

Commerce is against morality. Morality is going to lose every time.

No one ever contributed anything to my designs.

I think the first things that are relevant are that things should work well; they should function.

I can’t climb very seriously now but I was a bit of a freak.

I’m not against vodka – they just asked us. They put out some story about us entertaining international celebrities with vodka, which of course wasn’t true.

There’s this very vulnerable planet of ours with finite resources. Architects and designers have, I think, a fair responsibility for conserving energy and materials, and making things durable.

I’ve always walked and climbed; spent a lot of time in the arctic and places.

Well, I’d probably go for any work I could get.

Magazines and advertising are flogging the idea that you have to keep changing things and get something new. I think that’s balls – evil. But obviously that’s your livelihood.

But I think it’s important that things endure.

We used to get published a lot. And there was this vodka advertisement… it embarrassed me a lot afterwards.

You’ve got to build a career and a practice.

I’m pretty much a vegetarian.