Cameron Sinclair Quotes

Treat the world like a failed state; then you can understand the players needed to fix it.

We often discuss housing refugees, but not how you help return refugees back to their home countries. As a result, in a post-disaster or post-conflict situation, we end up with intractable refugee camps that end up staying for decades.

Families want their child to get an education; families want safe access to healthcare; families want a roof over their head. When we silo issues, we end up with solutions that are in conflict with each other.

Forget your environmental footprint. Think about your ethical footprint. What good is it to build a zero-carbon, energy efficient complex, when the labor producing this architectural gem is unethical at best?

Success will only happen with Afghans leading the charge, and it is far, far more important for Kabul to create and support a purpose-driven school of architecture than to invite a high profile designer to build.

When you build a beautiful building, people love it. And the most sustainable building in the world is the one that's loved.

Ego gets you inches but it doesn't get you impact.

A career is a job you love, right? That's what a career should be. If you're in a job that you hate, you should quit. That's the way I look at it. I'm in a job that I love, so I'm going to make it my career.

Design is about creating spaces for people to enjoy and of course, creating moments where you elevate the spirit, but 'design for good' is figuring out a program that not only creates better spaces, but creates jobs, creates new industry and really kind of raises the conversation about how we rebuild.

The fact that the president (Michelle Bachelet) was out giving minute-to-minute reports a few hours after the quake in the middle of the night gives you an indication of their disaster response,

Some of the best work that's happening right now is from architects who have remained in their home countries and who have focused on a local or national identity and the idea of critical regionalism.

The Internet has created an incredible democratization of the architecture industry.

Many feel that sitting at a screen sweating over the design of handrail details for the next cute downtown boutique hotel just doesn't make sense when more than 150,000 people have lost their lives, more than five million people have been made homeless and whole towns have been swept away.

I build community. However, I do it wearing a number of hats.

It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzz word. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.

When you as a designer design something that burdens a community with maintenance and old world technology, basically failed developed world technology, then you will crush that community way beyond bad design; you'll destroy the economics of that community, and often the community socially is broken.

After two decades of reconstruction work, I want to work on projects that lay at the intersection of cultural diplomacy and national identity - ones that empower local communities to define progress, not have it sanctioned by others.