I believe there is a very real tension between creative ambition and budgetary constraints, and it is insufficiently recognised that architecture is a negotiation between these extremes. In other words, the art of architecture requires a form of creative optimism and, at times, a suspension of logic, while experience and common sense also play an important part.
Jonathan Sergison, ‘Thrift and circumstance’; Papers 2 (pg. 75), an earlier version of this paper was given as a lecture at ‘The complexity of the ordinary’, Copenhagen, 5 October 2006













