Most of what's around us is banal. We live with it. We accept it as inevitable.

I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope.

Everybody's an artist. Unfortunately we don't treat them as such.

If you're serious about being an architect, you've got to learn how to take responsibility. It's not fluff. You have to do every detail on every bloody piece of the building. You have to know how the engineering works. You have to know how the fittings go together. You have to master the mechanical, electrical, acoustical - everything.

If you know where it's going, it's not worth doing.

It's not new that architecture can profoundly affect a place, sometimes transform it.

When I was a child I could do math and art, so I had left- and right-brain capabilities. But I've seen my children, who are more right-brained, struggling. My son was told he wouldn't make it to college, but he dogged it through and ended up being accepted by 10 major art schools after the high school advisor said, "Please don't apply. You're going to be disappointed." That kid's an artist now.