Dominic Cullinan on life, work and the secret he’s never told his family

What got you started?
Extending pea-shooters into rifles in my dad’s garage, weekends in my granny’s lighthouse near Beachy Head which she had modernised as a homage to Ronchamp.

Who was your most inspiring tutor?
The demanding genius Peter Salter, for being forgiving, funny and kind, and his then partner Chris Macdonald for being none of these. Peter Wilson for showing how it’s as easy as making lovely drawings and Eric Parry for saying it’s all just a dream-sequence anyway.

Which architect have you learnt the most from?
My uncle Ted naturally, for life-long inspiration and never making it easy for me; and Ian Ritchie for his sleights of hand but complete integrity.

What project do you most regret losing?
Our salon-de-refusés feels like a vast chamber of tears where it’s too painful to tread. Some lost projects would have made our meteoric rise much quicker if we’d hung on to them. Losing whole schools overnight happens much too often to us but the Coram Family masterplan in Bloomsbury would have been a masterpiece in our hands. Alas Deyan Sudjic didn’t see it the same way.

What part of the design process do you most enjoy?
When constraints become defining virtues. When a design starts to have a life of its own and takes over from its author: then when the client sees that and we share watching it develop, bending in the winds along the way.

What is your favourite city?
Delhi when I was there in the eighties. Wholly Indian, wholly other yet strangely familiar to a romantic English youth.

What building would you most like to see demolished?
Islington. Without it we’d be living in town and what’s it for anyway?

Who is your favourite client?
The one that commissions us to construct a full scale replica of Venice in the Thames estuary.

What is your dream commission?
A cross between a barn and a palace, like Villa Saraceno by Palladio, but an urban equivalent.

What one piece of legislation would you introduce?
Abolish private schools. UK’s lack of social mobility is embarrassing.

What is your favourite architectural book?
I’ve never read any.

What is your favourite novel?
The Information by Martin Amis. Crippling professional jealousy made me laugh out loud on the tube.

What are you listening to?
My heart arguing with my head, non-stop Bob Dylan and sixties reggae covers of Motown classics.

Complete the sentence: At heart I am a frustrated…
…iconoclast.

What does your family think of your work?
They don’t know I’m an architect. I haven’t yet dared to admit it. They say if I was nicer I’d have more of it.

Your child tells you they want to be an architect. What do you say?
I have one such child called Johnny at the Mackintosh in Glasgow, and I’m delighted and he knows it.

Is it getting easier?
Oh yes. I’m entering my prime, getting so much more certain and adept. Will the world recognise that in time?


Postscript

Dominic Cullinan is a director at Scabal

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