Annabelle Selldorf

I remember, as a young architect, people always talked about I. M. Pei's concrete. He had a particular specification no one else knew.

There isn't any one material that's mine. It all depends on the context. For example, I did a house that had the most exquisite marble applications. That sounds ostentatious, but it wasn't, given the context. The color white I subscribe to extensively. I love thinking about color, but I often go with white.

I know I'm old-fashioned, but there's just something about the act of looking at books versus taking in information on a screen, which is so one-dimensional. There's a sense of ownership that you have with books, a physical connection.

When everything is perfectly orderly and understandable, there has to be one thing that puts everything into question.

I always tend to think, even in residential projects, about what a space is being asked to do - where is it located, what are the circumstances, where can I attack the problem, so to speak. How can you create a narrative for people moving through it? How can you convey its character?

So much of what makes a room great is how you enter and circulate through it, how it addresses the body.