For 40 years, Paul Andreu was among the world's foremost airport design experts. Reflecting on this before the turn of the millennium, he stated that architectural historians of the future might consider the 1990s as ?the age of the air terminal.? But shortly after this, he left the arena of airport design to focus on other large projects, many of them in China. In this interview, the latest of Vladimir Belogolovsky's ?City of Ideas? series, Andreu explains why he made the switch and shares his thoughts on how good architecture is made?saying it often depends more on what you don't tell your client than what you do.

Charles-de-Gaulle airport, Terminal 1, Paris, 1967-1974. Image © Paul Maurer

For 40 years, Paul Andreu was among the world's foremost airport design experts. Reflecting on this before the turn of the millennium, he stated that architectural historians of the future might consider the 1990s as ?the age of the air terminal.? But shortly after this, he left the arena of airport design to focus on other large projects, many of them in China. In this interview, the latest of Vladimir Belogolovsky's ?City of Ideas? series, Andreu explains why he made the switch and shares his thoughts on how good architecture is made?saying it often depends more on what you don't tell your client than what you do.Paul Andreu: Before we start, I must explain something. I am an architect and engineer. For a long time I was not an independent architect but worked at and th...