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can happen surprisingly fast, like Beijing
Airport. It’s the biggest in the world and was
realised by 50,000 people in five years. Or
Hong Kong Airport, which involved moving
mountains and creating land from the ocean.
But for every one of these epic journeys, there
is an honourable series of projects which are
smaller – do not command the headlines –
but are equally important. I am reminded
of the anonymous tradition in architecture.
Bernard Rudofsky draws attention to this in
his book Architecture Without Architects,
which accompanied the New York Museum
of Modern Art exhibition of the same name
in the 1960s. It illustrated the so-called ver-
nacular stream of buildings which in a past
before the age of cheap energy were elegant
and ingenious responses to local climates.
These ranged from benign Mediterranean
regions to the extremes of desert heat and the
intense cold of polar and Alpine locations.
The resulting structures were formed from
the materials at hand and were always in
harmony with the landscape. We cannot at-
tribute names to the authors of this vast body
of indigenous work which spans continents
and is not considered as architecture in the
conventional sense by most writers on the
subject. However, for me, even as a student,
it has been an important and inspirational
mainstream. For example, our zero-carbon,
zero-waste project of Masdar would not have
been feasible without applying the timeless
lessons learnt from traditional desert build-
ing which go back several hundred years.
Such works as our school system for Sierra
Leone and the winery for Château Margaux
are appropriately local in their response and
this back-to-basics approach. Perhaps it is
in the nature of the media to be moved, as I
believe we all are, by the biggest, the longest,
the tallest – we are all stirred by the epic di-
mension, that’s human nature. But it should
not cloud us to the importance of buildings
which are smaller in scale.
LFG: But projects like Trafalgar Square
have also commanded attention and they’re
very silent.
NF: Yes. I am often asked which of our
buildings in London are the most important.
Almost as a reflex, I say Trafalgar Square and
the Millennium Bridge, because in terms of
their importance to the community – whether
locals or visitors – and on the capital city,
I think they have had far more social im-
pact than any single building. That is not to
underestimate the importance of the British
Museum or many of our other built projects,
but it is about the greater significance of the
infrastructure of public space, routes and
connections. When I move in this city of
Madrid over the next 24 hours, the lasting
impression will be of its public spaces. Of
course I will have a recall of this building as
well as my apartment. But the big picture will
be the infrastructure of Madrid: its spaces,
routes and connections, the journey from the
airport, the walk to the restaurant...
LFG: You once said that you had been
much influenced by buildings, but not as
much as by libraries.
NF: Books have been one of the most
powerful influences in my life. I would say
that without books and access to a public
library, we wouldn’t be having this conver-
sation today. I might have ended up as an
office clerk or a manual worker somewhere
in the north of England, certainly not an
architect. There are all kinds of interesting
links between the past and present. At the
time that we won the competition for the New
