In this day and age, how should architecture respond to the immediate and future needs of the people? When the proliferation of data and the speed of change brought about by scientific and technological advances grow in such an exponential way, the subsequent difficulties we experience, of understanding and selecting, can render us incommunicative, make us feel irrelevant and perplexed.

In these critical and stimulating times, architecture seems unable to give satisfactory solutions. The industry is weighed down with a lethargic attachment to an idealistic past, full of certainty. It has also become the victim of excessive commercial exploitation, whereby architecture becomes just another notch in a production line of consumer objects that may or may not serve a purpose.

Architecture must fight for the opportunity to serve a more integral purpose; to create places that inspire exchange and encourage communication. It is about producing objects that have a specific purpose and which ultimately help us to  live in a dignified and joyful way in the face of this new and increasingly alien world.

The world is changing at a great speed and we can only look on with the same naivety, fear and hope that we experience when faced with the unknown. Architecture is about projecting our life into the future whilst drawing on the past for those things, material or immaterial, that we consider essential, and which, like a powerful set of tools, aid and inform the creative tasks that inevitably lie ahead.