I think we did a pretty good role, linking, being a sounding board really and a driving force, especially from the bottom up. I think that part of this is bottom up as well as top down.

I'm just saying that there are high quality materials, and when we change them then there should be a way of changing them so that you can celebrate that change - rather than just 'mix it up'.

If you live in a squalid environment, then of course you are going to want to get out of it, you are probably going to want to get into the country, because that's what it does.

I think we did a pretty good role, linking, being a sounding board really and a driving force, especially from the bottom up. I think that part of this is bottom up as well as top down.

Everyone has the right to walk from one end of the city to the other in secure and beautiful spaces. Everybody has the right to go by public transport. Everybody has the right to an unhampered view down their street, not full of railings, signs and rubbish.

You know, the environment is fragmenting, and the environment is, in many places, absolutely hideous!

If I remember rightly Holland for instance has something like 45, and it's a much smaller country. In comparison we have very few and they are very badly financed.

So I think that, yes, anything that makes it more palatable and easier to understand, such as a Virtual Centre, has to be seen as a primary activity within the educational and information global state.

I think you could make a completely Virtual Centre, though I have a general feeling, and maybe because I am getting very old, that you still need face to face.

I believe very strongly, and have fought since many years ago - at least over 30 years ago - to get architecture not just within schools, but architecture talked about under history, geography, science, technology, art.

This is a pivotal time for urban regeneration. We must take a long term view.

It is quite interesting that whilst there are tremendous theories, in the 1960s when IT was born, everybody was supposedly going to their cottage in the countryside to work in a virtual way.

The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved.

Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times.

My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we - architects - can effect the quality of life of the people.

There has to be policies about that, about what materials we use and so on.

'Be passionate about your work and your life' was instilled in me by my mother Dada, who was a potter. She also introduced me to the arts and encouraged me to embrace the new.

Architects are not clients. We can't build without something to built.

Architects design buildings; that's what we do, so we have to go with the flow; and, even though I'm still an old Leftie, global capitalism does have its good side. It's broken down barriers - the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union - it's raised a lot of people up economically, and for architects, it has meant that we can work around the world.

Architecture is a living thing. If I want to leave something to the future, it has to be able to change - but retain something of the ethos that we built up over 50 years.

Architecture is a slow business, and city planning even slower.

Architecture is about public space held by buildings.

Architecture is always political.

Architecture is measured against the past; you build in the future, and you try to imagine the future.

Cities are about juxtaposition.

Cities are about juxtaposition. In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It's that contrast we like. In Bordeaux, we built law courts right next door to what is effectively a listed historic building, and that makes it exciting.

Cities depend on a healthy mix of uses and people for their vitality. As a pre-eminent world city, London is a magnet to people from across the globe.

Dyslexia, though, made me realise that people who say 'but you can't do that' aren't actually very important. I don't take 'no' too seriously.

Education in British schools isn't good enough. It's not remotely imaginative enough. It lets down too many children, excluding them from society, and, as I've often said, people who are excluded from society tend to express themselves in ways not acceptable to society.

I believe very much in a dialogue between buildings - I believe it's always been there. I think buildings have different identities and live very well next to each other. We always have the shock of the new, and that's fine. The renaissance style is totally different from the medieval, and they have a dialogue across time.

I cycle, which is a healthy thing for an 80-year-old to do. I rarely go further than five miles, but in those five miles I can get to 80 percent of the places I want to go.

I don't believe in the ownership of work.

I don't understand why everyone has to wear black, grey and white.

I had lots of trouble in school as a child, and I lost confidence. Teachers thought I was stupid. I learned to read very late, when I was 11. Dyslexia wasn't recognized then, and the assumption was you were incapable of thinking.

I have a very big family, and that is my number one thing, and we go away for a month to see my cousins in Italy every year, but I need to work.

I like the idea of trying to influence society by taking a brief, then maybe subtly changing it or looking at it in a new way to see what interesting things can emerge.

I love cities, I spend most of my life talking about cities. And the design of cities does have an effect on your life. You're lucky if you can see trees out of your window and you have a square nearby, or a bar, a cornershop, a surgery. Then you're living well.

I love my job. What would I retire to?

I remember my mother taking me to see the Picasso show in the 1940s, and I was impressed by the life and vibrancy of it all. It was a bit too avant-garde for most Londoners at the time, but since then, the city has become a centre for modern culture.

I think greed is a critical problem - the gap between the poor and the rich. The gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent.

If you had a carbon tax, you'd have less cars and more bicycles, more people getting around on foot and by public transport.

In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It's that contrast we like.

Most buildings, whether they're Gothic cathedrals or Romanesque ones, were high tech for their time.

My architecture tends to be legible, light and flexible. You can read it. You look at a building, and you can see how it is constructed. I put the structure outside.

My mother was very family-oriented. And I do love being with my children.

My parents always told me that nothing was impossible.

Of course I know very little about architecture, and the older I get the less I know.

One of the things you see in New York is that offices keep their lights on at night. They're proud of their building. Great. But they must find another way to be proud without draining energy.

Society has to get a grip and put a tax on carbon. Of course, there is much that flows from that, and it is a complex situation. The small details of something such as climate change are political and social, and they are a lot about fairness and how we rebalance towards a fairer society.