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 your focus is social change and not financial change why wouldn't you want to share that openly? Innovation only succeeds when it's shared.

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.

We often discuss housing refugees, but not how you help return refugees back to their home countries. As a result, in a post-disaster or post-conflict situation, we end up with intractable refugee camps that end up staying for decades.

For me, I think the most exciting thing in architecture is the re-emergence of the locally-focused architect.

An architect is not an artist but an optimistic realist.

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.