Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture.

I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.

The architect Borromini's Quattro Fontane, a little church in Rome, is one of the most beautiful rooms in history.

Ninety percent of the buildings we live in and around aren't architecture. No, that's not right - 98 percent.

There is a backlash against me and everyone who has done buildings that have movement and feeling.

When people condemn me for designing iconic buildings in cities and not having an idea what a city is, they haven't done their homework. I started in urban design and city planning. It's just that when I got out of school there wasn't much of a market for that. There still isn't.

Everyone has a desire, if not a need, to use their individual signatures. Whenever people meet to talk about a project, even stuffy old businessmen, they say they want to create something new.