Quotes from Thomas Heatherwick

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.

I'm very interested in buildings that have meaning for a particular place. I suppose it feels slightly rude to me if the imposed style that lands in a place is almost stronger than the place. For me it's about inventing a solution for each place; if people then want to know who did it, then great.

Clearly I've got an ego.

Ambition is a form of creativity.

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 studio does projects all over the world, and in each place, we focus on trying to make a project specific to that place. We take a different perspective everywhere we work - our passion is public projects, wherever they are.

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

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

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.

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.

One great building does not make a great city.

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.

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.

It gives me the creeps when I see a frame for a building going up and recognise the architect. You shouldn't know who a project is by.

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

Historically, in the world of architecture, enormous amounts of care and energy have been lavished on things that are almost a cliched idea of culture.

When you think about the worst places humans come into contact with, they are often our health environments.

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

The Learning Hub is a collection of handmade concrete towers surrounding a central space that brings everyone together, interspersed with nooks, balconies and gardens for informal collaborative learning.

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 thought I wanted to be an inventor but then discovered you couldn't study inventing!

When I heard of the 'garden bridge' idea, it seemed so clear and powerful, the notion of using nature to scale down an enormous piece of potentially wind-swept exposed link. That's what struck me - not treating the bridge just as a link, but as a place.

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

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