Standing on the top of Lingmell, Lake District, before starting the final climb to the summit of Scafell Pike. I feel at home in the great outdoors and I definitely appreciate the silence and tranquility.

Architecture has been good to me over the years; it forms the backdrop to some wonderful lasting memories.

As a child, I have distinct memories of playing and exploring in a brutalist-inspired adventure playground at Les Halles in Paris. I remember feeling insignificant and overawed by the monolothic brick facade of the East Stand at Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane stadium.

In my late teenage years I visited places like Futuroscope and The Eden Project; places and buildings that transported me to another world and gave me a sense of what a near-future utopia might be like.

From these recollections, I have developed the belief that while architecture can be visually arresting and objectively functional, it is mostly an art form that should be experienced.

Architecture must make us feel connected to it - emotionally and tangibly. It must enable us to form a relationship, not just with itself but also its surroundings. And it must arouse our senses and evoke moods.

The Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi once mused that,

Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea.

Through the atmosphere it creates, the way it shapes and uses light, the palette of materials it employs, its shape and form, successful architecture is the sum of its parts; Taniguchi’s tea.