John Pawson: Pioneer of inner space exploration

He's a mill owner's son who grew up in Halifax. As each of his four sisters left home, his parents knocked down walls to make John's small bedroom bigger. "That's how I really came to appreciate space. Rather than expanding my stuff to fill it, I just lay back and enjoyed it. There are so many benefits, too. Emptiness offers serenity."

He tried to recreate that Spartan bedroom aesthetic at Eton. He removed everything from his study and rigged up a hammock – a move than did not win approval and he was soon told to reinstate the furniture.

"It's hard to pin down where the minimalism stemmed from. There was no Damascene moment. It's probably nature and nurture. My parents were Methodists, the mill architecture was very simple, there was a treeless landscape. They must all have had an effect."

John was all set for a career in the family business until he was 24. He walked out of his "old life" after his attempts to "art direct" a minimalist wedding caused conflict with his fiance and her parents. She called the whole thing off and on the day he was to have been married he stepped out on to the tarmac at Tokyo airport instead.

A cheap air ticket had come his way at a party and Japan appealed because he remembered seeing a documentary about Zen Buddhism. After a short spell in a Buddhist monastery, he taught English at the University of Nagoya, before moving to Tokyo, where he visited a Japanese architect, Shiro Kuramata.

The experience inspired him to sign up for classes at the Architecture Association in London. "I found I had a facility for architecture and I had to set up my own practice in 1981 because no-one would have employed me."

His lack of formal qualifications proved to be no barrier to success.

Early commissions included homes for the writer, Bruce Chatwin, and collector, Doris Lockhart Saatchi. He has also designed Calvin Klein's flagship store in Manhattan, airport lounges for Cathay Pacific, a condominium on New York's Grammercy Park, a set for a ballet and the interior of a yacht.

His most celebrated projects include the Sackler Crossing at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and the Cistercian monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dyur in the Czech Republic. This latter won the Frate Sole International Prize for Sacred Architecture. They can all be seen in a Design Museum exhibition dedicated to his work and feature in a new book John Pawson: Plain Space, an intimate and informative read by Alison Morris, who has worked for him for 10 years

At the heart of the exhibition, which will have large-scale photographs, sketches, study models and prototypes, is a large space designed by John to offer an experience of his work. This is the first time the Design Museum has devised a full-scale architectural installation inside the museum.

While flattered by it all, John is concerned that photographs can't portray how his buildings feel. "Pictures are great but they are one dimensional. You don't feel the sensuality or the excitement of the atmosphere and you don't see the quality of light."

His favourite building is the monastery in Bohemia. "I love it and go back twice a year. It encapsulates everything. It is like a small city. There's a church, cloister, a school and hospital.

"It has taken 10 years to build and it's still ongoing. They've just finished a guest house and a small factory and workshops. I had the great privilege of staying in a Trappist dormitory, which gave me a real insight into how the monks live."

John's work might look gloriously simple, but minimalist architecture, which has visual clarity and grace, is difficult to achieve and requires a meticulous eye for detail.

"Minimalism isn't about throwing stuff out. It's all about light most of all and attention to detail. When there's nothing in the room the exact position of a light switch requires careful consideration. It all takes time. We need time to reflect and time to build. I call it slow architecture."

It's also a costly business. When everything is pared back, what remains has to be top quality. "One of the ironies is that it is expensive to create because the materials matter. They have to be beautiful, natural materials." His own home has white walls and white ceiling leading down to wooden floors and there is nothing, neither art nor knick-knacks, in between.

"I love travelling light and feeling unencumbered by material things. I don't like things lying around, but resisting the need to acquire stuff is a tough discipline. I realise it's not for everyone and I certainly don't preach and say people should live like this. It's just how I like to live." He admits it can be hard to square it with domesticity.

He lives with wife Catherine, and before they left home, two sons Caius and Benedict. "Catherine would like pictures on the wall but an expanse of wall can be a beautiful thing in its own right. I've always fought hard against compromise and that's a challenge when you live with three other people."

So there's has to be compromise. Catherine got her wood floor, whereas John would've preferred stone. "The key to maintaining the clean look is storage and trying to curb my weakness for kitchen pots. I'm afraid I break my own rules sometimes."

He is overseeing the design and interior fit-out of the Design Museum's new home in the former Commonwealth Institute, along with a host of other projects including one in Yorkshire – a cottage on the Mulgrave estate in Sandsend, near Whitby. "I'm pleased to be busy.

"I love what I do and people do get it now. That wasn't always the case when I first started. There was definitely a non-understanding."

The John Pawson: Plain Space exhibition is at the Design Museum, London, from September 22 to January 30, www.designmuseum.org.

John Pawson Plain Space, by Alison Morris is published by Phaidon Press at 45. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepost bookshop.co.uk. P&P is 2.75.

YP MAG 4/9/10