If architecture had nothing to do with art, it would be astonishingly easy to build houses, but the architect's task - his most difficult task - is always that of selecting.
I am going to be working on bathroom fittings for a company in the USA, and then I thought it was appropriate to simplify the fittings and, thus, lowering the cost.
With a painter or a sculptor, one cannot begin to alter his works, but an architect has to put up with anything, because he makes utility objects - the building is there to be used, and times change.
Carrying out the thing, getting it to the point when one might say: There, now it is good - that point is hard to reach. Often, one sets very high goals for oneself. Perhaps too high.
But inspiration? - That's when you come home from abroad and are asked: Well, have you found inspiration? - and fortunately you haven't. But the impressions sink in, of course, and may emerge later: None of us has invented the house; that was done many thousands of years ago.
Furniture manufacturing in plastics requires very costly machinery, which the Danish market is not big enough to justify. Or so they say. But show me a plastics manufacturer who dares to take on the experiment.
You will soon find that I am a bit obsessive about my work. And that is a little sad, one often feels strangely restricted, not finding time to simmer, although one actually has many interests.
That business of relaxation, which is so terribly modern today, is all good and well, but my work interests me so much, and is so varied, that many times it seems relaxing when I go from one aspect to another.
Besides, I think that when one has been through a boarding school, especially then, you have some resistance, because it was both fine comradeship and a fairly hard training.
When I travel, I draw and paint sketches which is great fun. And as long as you are fully aware that it has nothing to do with actual art, I think that's all right.
Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns.
I do not feel certain until I have confronted my initial solution with other solutions - although in fact the first solution often proves to be the right one.
In addressing a task, one almost always has several possible options, sometimes only a few, and they may all be practical and functional. But they lack the aesthetic aspect that raises it to architecture.
