The truth is, the way you write music, it's a code. It has to be very precise. It's scientific, but ultimately it also depends on interpretation. It's very similar to how you grow a master plan: it's an objective document, but at the same time it is a lyrical document which allows through interpretation to become a harmonious work of art.

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?

The Spiral Gallery may happen, too. It is not dependent on government funding.

And it is very moving because one has to see the site not as just another site of development but it is a very special site. It is a site that souls and hearts of all Americans.

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

Well, I think one doesn't really have to invent this memorial space, because it is already there. And it is speaking with a voice and, you know, 4 million of us came to see the site.

Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it's about experience, it's about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious