I studied architecture in New York. So, really I was very moved, like everyone else, to try to contribute something that has that resonance and profundity of it means to all of us.

Buffer between commercial, memorial and retail space.

I'm not Candide, nor Dr Pangloss, but we know that faith moves mountains.

Don't look at the superficial success, at the short-term success. Look at the deep spiritual questions that architecture has to answer. Who do you build for? Where? What should you build?

You cannot suddenly make Lower Manhattan into a sad place because we saw such a dramatic loss of life. You have to balance the memory, which is so important, and use it as a kind of Archimedean Point to create a lively, incredibly interesting, and culturally significant piece of a city and neighborhood.

I believe that the idea of the totality, the finality of the master-plan, is misguided. One should advocate a gradual transformation of public space, a metamorphic process, without relying on a hypothetical time in the future when everything will be perfect. The mistake of planners and architects is to believe that fifty years from now Alexanderplatz will be perfected. -p.197

What is a habit? It’s just a shackle for ourselves.