Bridges & buildings by Pier Luigi Nervi Italian engineer. I started my studies as an engineer but then preferred to study architecture as there was more that was unknown and waiting to be discovered. Throughout my career I have been drawn by new opportunities - so when computers arrived I was one of the first architects to take advantage and explore the possibilities. Thermographics is one of the new 'frontiers' of practice and the increasing demands of energy efficiency require constantly evolving strategies to optimise the design/performance of even simple constructions.

Bernard Rudofsky was one of the first to demonstrate that most architecture we consider to be beautiful and useful is made by people acting collectively within a common cultural and spiritual perspective. Paul Oliver whose seminal work 'Shelter & Society: New studies in Vernacular Architecture' and lectures at Cambridge and the Architectural Association were a great inspiration. I set up a course on Sustainable Architecture at the Prince of Wales Institute in 1993 as part of the Graduate Course on which I was a tutor and later was fortunate on coming to Oxford in the 1990s to participate with Paul Oliver in the first few courses in International Vernacular Architecture at Oxford Brookes University.

Keith Critchlow has been an inspiration all my working life. He himself was inspired by Buckminster-Fuller and formulated an order to space in terms of the Platonic and Archimedean solids into a tabular form that mirrors the Periodic Table of the elements. It has remained in print for nearly 50 years and inspires generations of designers including Julia Barfield and David Marks who designed the London Eye.

Critchlow became fascinated by the subtleties of Islamic Patterns and went on to write the definitive book on the subject which is even used by craftsmen in islamic countries! Similarly inspired I began analysing the intricate geometries and weaving patterns into my student designs. Later I went on to examine Critchlow's students at the Royal College of Art. Geometry still forms the underlying curriculum of the The Visual Islamic & Traditional Arts hosted by the Prince's School of Traditional Arts in London under the University of Wales.

My professional life is intertwined with my spiritual quest to become a fully conscious human being. I have been inspired by the principles of the unity of existence - as a conscious entity rather than an abstract concept in which we are all 'players' in Shakespeare's terms - all equal in terms of opportunity - but some more conscious than others. The philosophy that has guided me in this is that of the 12th century andalusian thinker Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi. The person in my life who educated me in these principles was Bulent Rauf with whom I designed a 'Monument to Man' that is on a hill up in the Borders of Scotland above the Beshara School, Chisholme House which was founded in 1975.