How intrinsic is IT to modern design? It has increased the immediacy with which you can vary things. You can make cleaner changes rather than rubbing out. Also nowadays, huge amounts of shared information can exist in cyberspace. Until we have an intelligent drawing board, however, sketching and visualising ideas will remain faster with a pencil and paper.

How has the net changed the way businesses present themselves? We work with a lot of TV, media and telecoms companies and we often find that project managers are very young. They come from the "MTV culture" and are very comfortable with the net. Nowadays instead of using flip-boards or PowerPoint presentations that last 25 minutes, our designers have moved towards using Flash (see www.macromedia.com/software/flash). I've got a 1Mb document now that encapsulates what I do in around two minutes.

What advances in software/hardware does an architect enjoy? The two most popular software packages that allow us to order, layer and create files in two and three dimensions are AutoCAD and MicroStation. We can model from basic data, or some designers who are using complex designs might decide to model and digitise it. We also use predictive models where we can look at the forces - environmental, fluid, structural - that come to bear on buildings. 3D Studio and Lightscape are very popular with us. Simulation is important, and also, to compete globally, the modern architect needs a lot of bandwidth.

Any preference between Mac and PC? I started with a Mac and I feel more comfortable with one. There are more applications you can run on a PC, which is just market economics. Some firms have remained very loyal to the Mac. They have good interfaces - it's easy to go between drawing and word programs. However, because of the size of our servers and the need to swap information worldwide, we're pushed into working with the industry standard, which is PC.

Is the net anything more than a powerful display tool? Much more. We're seeing at real estate level a shift away from the 2G to the 3G city. People are locating where they can get fast access to bandwidth and data. We're working with Harvard on a predictive model of the 3G city map.

Any favourite websites? Inter Milan's site is my home page. Tomato's site is always interesting,as is Marconi's and Allessandro Mendini's.

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