Erich Mendelsohn's drawings are expressive and beautiful. If he'd had the computers we have now, everything I've done he would have done before me. I would have had to figure out something else.

That's where you have to look for your inspiration. Don't separate the rest of your life - who you are, what you love - from your work.

You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form.

Each project, I suffer like I'm starting over again in life. There's a lot of healthy insecurity that fuels this stuff.

We have always created - music, literature, art, dance. The art around us - or lack of it - may be a measure of how we're doing as individuals and as a civilization, so maybe we should be worried.

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

I can't just decide myself what's being built. Someone decides what they want, then I work for them.