Craig Dykers, of the international practice Snøhetta, takes our Proust Questionnaire and has some difficulty picking favorites!

Who is your favorite living architect?

H+dM, Diébédo Kéré, Kengo Kuma, Álvaro Siza, Druot/Lacaton/Vassal

Who is your favorite dead architect?

Dom Hans van der Laan, Rudolf Schwartz, Louis Sullivan

How would you describe the personality of your practice?

Multi-verse

What is your practice's main weakness?

Too many ideas

What is the trait that you appreciate most in a building?

It feels like I just met someone great at a party

What is the trait that you most appreciate in an architect?

Buoyancy and empathy

What is the trait that you most deplore in an architect?

Abuse of language as a power strategy

What is your favorite type of project to work on?

Places of connection

What does architectural happiness mean?

Desire to revisit

What does architectural misery mean?

Fear and loathing

Where would you most like to build (where you haven't already)?

A garden at Zijin Shan, the Purple Mountain in Nanjing

What is your favorite color?

I generally avoid colors of struggle, I love the rest

What is your favorite flower?

The Lupin (Lupinus) or the flowers of the pea plant (pisum sativum)...Lupins grow in poor soil and the pea plant revealed genetics

What is your favorite bird?

Hummingbirds or Flying Fish

Who is your favorite poet?

Muhammad Ali and Rumi

Who is your favorite artist?

Laurie Anderson, José Parla, JR, Daniel Rybakken, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Diebenkorn, Francis Bacon, Gustave Courbet, Paleolithic cave painters (unkown)

When do you lie?

When the truth is worse than a lie

What talent would you most like to have?

Better capacity to look into people's eye comfortably

What architectural strategies do you most overuse?

Simplicity

How would you like to die?

At the end of life