People outside the profession of architecture perhaps often lack the understanding of how their physical environment comes into being. What are the processes, the concerns and considerations? What are the parameters that shape the world around them?

All evidence shows that we are actually getting smarter. Roughly we are getting 10 IQ points smarter every decade. The speed of innovation is also faster.

Silicon Valley has been this global engine of innovation and economic growth over the last few decades, but a tidal wave of innovation that has been focused very much in the digital realm.

Today, we have sophisticated building technology: we can calculate and simulate the environments and performance of the building, the thermal exposure of envelop, or the air flow through an urban space or structure.

Nuclear tests poison the environment - and they also poison the political climate. They breed mistrust, isolation and fear.

Some argue that now isn't the time to push the green agenda - that all efforts should be on preventing a serious recession. That is a false choice. It fails to recognise that climate change and our carbon reliance is part of problem - high fuel prices and food shortages due to poor crop yields compound today's financial difficulties.

Where Republicans encourage popular myths about taxes, spending, and climate change, Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.

I am always more interested in people than plants. Nature doesn't make gardens, people make gardens. And the story of a garden is always the story of a person.