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.

We live in a time of renaissance ... cities are coming back to life, after a long neglect.

And of course I like Berlin a lot. It's such an interesting city

In a strange way, architecture is really an unfinished thing, because even though the building is finished, it takes on a new life. It becomes part of a new dynamic: how people will occupy it, use it, think about it.

Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It's based on wonder.

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

Cities are the greatest creations of humanity.