If you focus on design, you can call yourself a designer. If you focus on the implementation of your design, you can call yourself an architect.

Forget your environmental footprint. Think about your ethical footprint. What good is it to build a zero-carbon, energy efficient complex, when the labor producing this architectural gem is unethical at best?

If you focus on design, you can call yourself a designer. If you focus on the implementation of your design, you can call yourself an architect.

Success will only happen with Afghans leading the charge, and it is far, far more important for Kabul to create and support a purpose-driven school of architecture than to invite a high profile designer to build.

After two decades of reconstruction work, I want to work on projects that lay at the intersection of cultural diplomacy and national identity - ones that empower local communities to define progress, not have it sanctioned by others.

A true architect is not an artist but an optimistic realist. They take a diverse number of stakeholders, extract needs, concerns, and dreams, then create a beautiful yet tangible solution that is loved by the users and the community at large. We create vessels in which life happens.

When you as a designer design something that burdens a community with maintenance and old world technology, basically failed developed world technology then you will crush that community way beyond bad design; you'll destroy the economics of that community and often the community socially is broken.