For most of his adult life, David Chipperfield has been haunted like a character out of Dickens – and there is something Dickensian about his name – by thoughts of Australia. In 1970, he farewelled his parents and two siblings when they left Devon, southern England, for Albany, south of Perth.

The 17-year-old lived a teenager’s dream, spending the next few years without fear of parental censure or constraint studying at London’s Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association. “Mum and Dad gave me the choice to leave or stay,” recalls Chipperfield. “I chose to stay and went to college very much on my own. Not only did I manage to get rid of my parents,” he laughs, “but they felt forever guilty about it.”