John Wardle

We've got a practice manager.

We've got other people that work so well that it does allow the practice to exist at the level it does.

And there's many other bright minds too.

I'm not sitting there as the font of all knowledge or as the...

...creator of everything throughout.

And I've set the practice up really well.

I've set it up knowing very comfortably what I can't do.

I remember when we got our first big building... ...we'd only ever done...the tallest building we'd ever done was a two-storey house... ...and we got a 34-storey tower to do.

Hilarious means that got us that project.

And I thought, God, I don't know how to do a lift core thing.

So I went out and employed a guy that knew how to do lift cores... ...and all those sort of things...

that doesn't matter now, 20 years later, that I can do a lift core.

I still don't know how to.

I didn't bother.

He's doing that.

So it is that sort of capacity that reaching out and creating an architectural practice with a very comfortable knowledge of all of the things that I can't do, shouldn't do or don't want to do, those three things, I think, to run a practice.

So it exists.

Because of that, I'll take full credit for that thesis, but it means the work we've got is generated through a coming together of a pretty remarkable bunch of people.

No, I think we're in a really interesting period where we're still holding on to those fragments of knowledge of traditional craft.

At the same time, particularly now, we're inventing new forms of craftsmanship and there's amazing processes set more immediately that connect our computer systems with computer-aided manufacturing of cutting, turning and forming machines in industry today.