THOMAS HEATHERWICK

To make architecture with any real value is a massive challenge.

Clearly I've got an ego.

One great building does not make a great city.

I have a strong sense that every project is an invention, which is not a word I hear being used in architecture courses.

I'm wary of the word 'inventing,' because in the British psyche the word 'inventor' is immediately linked with 'mad'. For me, inventing is problem-solving.

An interest in ideas is a sign of human life. People are fascinated by what the future is going to be - and the future is going to be an accumulation of ideas.

I am finally getting the chance to build large structures and break preconceptions that my designs are just sculptures for people to be in. But my work always comes down to the human scale.

As a teenager, my father took me to the shows at the Architectural Association and to places like Milton Keynes back when it was first being built. But I couldn't find anything for me. There seemed to be despair at the possibility of the built environment possessing any imagination in the real world.

I studied at a time when buildings were sterile things, and their creators were hands-off people - super-intelligent people, but you felt they didn't love the stuff buildings are made from.

I don't feel I'm trying to make art. I'm trying to make interesting things. People can relate to that.

At the root of everything I do is a fascination with ideas - what ideas are for, what jobs they do.

It's important for people who criticise architects - whether what they build is or isn't to your taste - to appreciate how they devote themselves and put everything into bringing a building into existence.

The Garden Bridge has not found its right moment, but I hope one day it will and that London continues to be open to ideas that make life here better.

I'm in love with cities. I find them amazing, the quiet co-ordination of thousands of people, going about what we're trying to do, and that organism of the city nurturing human aspiration, and the actual city fabric itself being a special thing rather than just infrastructure.

I've always been interested in projects that work at multiple levels.

I try to be a positive person, but I'm also always looking and wondering, 'Maybe this could be done differently.' As soon as your mind is in a critical mode, you're halfway through designing; as soon as you start thinking about whether something could be better, you're already halfway through a solution.

When I was little, I just was very tuned in to the functionality and aesthetics of things around me.

Often the most important moment in the design process is figuring out what the right question is.

For me, every one of our projects is a research-and-development project.

You can make people feel valued or cared for by design alone. It's not purely about money. It's about how we choose to value human experience.

Everything that we start is something that we don't know what the outcome is going to be.

Ambition is a form of creativity.

My studio's passion is improving the public experience of cities for everyone.

The world of contemporary art has, in a way, exponentially expanded in the last couple of decades, and almost every major city in Europe and Asia and North America has fallen over themselves to have their own contemporary art museum.

Our job is to get people in, create the spaces, and then get out of the way.