I spent a lot of time on farms when I was growing up, and I've been obsessed with the practical logic of farmyards - the turning radius of tractors, where the chickens and ducks might go. It's not a place where stand-alone aesthetic decisions make a lot of sense.

A house isn't really understandable until it settles into the site: until it's built, furnished and lived in for four or five years. The reality is not on paper but in how a building sits on the land - how it relates to trees, to slopes, to water, to gardens.

I'm not interested in placing my signature on a house but would rather it be a signature of the place it's located.

How do you walk from one place to another? What makes you want to walk someplace? Any place that you want to get out of your car and walk is a good place by definition.

Things never go the way you expect them to. That's both the joy and frustration in life. I'm finding as I get older that I don't mind, though. It's the surprises that tickle me the most, the things you don't see coming.

False expectations take away joy.

Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

I am interested in the idea that people should be able to define their own happiness.