Water world

Rafał Ostrowski, ‘Eurobuild CEE’: In 2007 you were recognised as one of most influential people in the world. In an annual opinion poll of the readers of Time magazine, you were ranked 122 globally – and it’s quite unusual for an  architect to appear at all on such a list. Do you feel like you’re so influential? Koen Olthuis, architect and founder of Dutch architectural firm Waterstudio: To be honest, when we received this recognition in 2007 it was a bit awkward for me. I thought that we had only just started out and we just had this vision – and that was basically all. Today we understand the systems of cities much better and we are also seeing that our vision has become much more realistic. We are being invited by governments and authorities all over the world to share this vision. What is your vision? Well, the cities today are completely static. What you’ve once built, you cannot easi