John Pawson CBE is the world’s leading architect and designer in all things spare and stripped back. His monastic style has graced airport lounges for Cathay Pacific, sets for the Royal Opera House, shops for Calvin Klein and Jil Sander and hotels for Ian Schrager – he’s currently working on the Edition Hotel in Madrid. It has even graced an actual monastery, the Abbey of Our Lady of Novy Dvur, in the Czech Republic.

Pawson has also designed lighting for Wonderglass, crystal for Swarovski and he gave the interior of London’s Design Museum its welcome calm. Not that everyone appreciates his dedication to less. His sister once sent him a blank sheet of paper in the post. When Pawson called her to ask what it meant, she told him – much to her amusement – that it was his membership to the minimalists’ club.

You’ve often been described as a minimalist, though perhaps that’s not the best description for your work.

Well, I’ve never tried to disassociate myself from the word ‘minimalism’. In the beginning of my career, journalists tried to create what they saw as a movement, lumped a whole load of us together and called us ‘the minimalists’ – and, of course, the Hi-Tech people said, “No, we’re not.” I think they were uncomfortable, because minimalism is so often misconstrued.

For me, the words that come to mind are more the likes of clarity; the focus on what’s essential; a drive to make space. And what we design hopefully makes people feel good. It’s that physical feeling of having a space to move, to breathe; not being surrounded by stuff gives you a certain freedom. I don’t think you can just measure comfort in terms of squashy sofas. Give me a bench any time.

And the term ‘minimalistic’ tends to get bandied about rather liberally.

Yes. Minimalism is not just painting the walls white and having wooden floors – it’s a much more sophisticated thing than that. If you control the light in a certain way, use the right materials and proportions and scale, you then get to a state that feels really good. But that takes time and money and experience – and for people, your client, to go along with it as well. Quite a lot of circumstances need to come together for it to be done well. You see the word ‘minimal’ used all the time to describe interiors, then you see them and they’re not minimal at all.