David Chipperfield Quotes

I may be a f..kwit but I'm not a liar. I was a believer.

My father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of our city.

But I think I'm a nice friend and a good person, and I try to do my work as best I can.

I practised as an architect for 10 years. I qualified in 1973 with a fellowship diploma of architecture. World Series Cricket gave me the freedom to go out and pursue architecture.

In architecture you should live for 150 years, because you have to learn in the first 75 years.

I've long since stopped worrying about how I'm portrayed in the press because ultimately it's not that important. Everyone who knows me knows I do what I do with the greatest integrity.

Instead of taking a very high-paying type of law job or something that I might be able to do, I have been a legislator. That's what I do. I think it's an honorable profession - if you're honest and have integrity and work hard.

I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.

In a way, I'd rather go into an interview and be disliked, and have unpleasant things written about me, than to have a wonderful, glowing article written that is in no way a reflection of who I am.

Be as you wish to seem.

I'm working on a school of architecture in China. It's rare that an architect gets to design a school of architecture, and here I get to do it. I'm so pleased that they asked me.

People believed what I said was what I believed.

I know I'm a good person.

At the end of the day, I'm not some evil guy.

You know, there's nothing you can do about your public image. It is what it is. I just try to do things honestly. I guess honesty is what you would call subjective: if you feel good about what you're doing, yourself, if you figure you're doing the right thing.

People outside the profession of architecture perhaps often lack the understanding of how their physical environment comes into being. What are the processes, the concerns and considerations? What are the parameters that shape the world around them?

I find that I don't lie about the big things in life. The things that matter. And about me. While I'm talking about myself, I rarely lie: I know who I am, my level of talent, that I'm not the most versatile filmmaker, the person I am. I don't lie about myself because I don't lie to myself.

Architects like to work in a problematic environment.

We forget the importance of engineering, but it's been used to design everything from St. Paul's Cathedral to The Shard.

I like to think of myself as a genuinely good person.

I think I'm a decent person.

I'd be a liar if I said I didn't care what people think, but I would rather have less people who like or approve of me for who I really am than a bunch more people who like or approve me for what I'm not.

I'm a good guy.

I'm a good person and a good guy.

I'm not Mary Poppins, but I think I functioned with integrity.