David Chipperfield
David Chipperfield
Sir David Alan Chipperfield CBE RA RDI RIBAis a British architect...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionArchitect
Date of Birth18 December 1953
want pay architecture
Britain gets the architecture it deserves. We don’t value architecture, we don’t take it seriously, we don’t want to pay for it and the architect isn’t trusted.
integrity interesting may
I may not be the most interesting architect, but I'm still out there and have maintained some position of integrity.
thinking years cost
I don't think architecture is radical. How can something that takes years and costs millions be radical?
missing filling-in lasts
You don't restore 'The Last Supper' by filling in the missing bits - you preserve. You accept the material that has somehow survived.
real museums media
I spent more than ten years working on the Neues Museum. It was a wonderful experience, an example of real collaboration between architects, conservationists, curators, client, politicians, the media, and the public. Discussions, even when difficult, were always about ideas. Ideas matter to Germans. They're a reflective people. That's attractive.
thinking mirrors people
I think that the point of being an architect is to help raise the experience of everyday living, even a little. Putting a window where people would really like one. Making sure a shaving mirror in a hotel bathroom is at the right angle. Making bureaucratic buildings that are somehow cheerful.
levels architecture ridiculous
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.
eye self media
We see buildings in Britain mostly as freestanding objects. They are not meant to have a dialogue with anything around them, or with history, or with ideas of any kind beyond the self-referential. What we call 'regeneration' is largely an excuse for building for maximum profit with a bit of sculptural design thrown in to catch the eye of the media.
mean bad-ass people
There is a danger when every building has to look spectacular; to look like it is changing the world. I don't care how a building looks if it means something, not to architects, but to the people who use it.
differences architecture good-and-bad
The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it.
bit fairly good people worked
I have always worked a bit with fashion people. I worked with Issey Miyake for a while, then Dolce & Gabbana; now we're working with Valentino. It's fine. The fashion world is a fairly weird world, but there are good people in it. It's weird because their timetables are unbearable.
behind building expect gives handed managers project
When the Americans are behind you, they're behind you 100%, and this gives you real confidence as an architect. They expect you to lead a building project - to make the kind of big and costly decisions that, in Britain, have been handed over to project managers and cost-cutters.
became certain column recover type
It's unfortunate that a certain type of stripped-down classicism became the in-house architectural language for 20th-century fascism. Can an architectural language recover from such an association? Yes, I think it can, because in the end what you're talking about is a column and beam.
concept convincing german people
The quality of the Neues Museum's construction is extraordinary even by German standards, and people can smell that quality. The concept would not have been so convincing without it.