Here we are surrounded by material that's being manufactured in unimaginable quantities worldwide and is used everywhere. I don't like it, no one likes it, and yet it's pervasive. We don't even see it.

People are searching for something they don't have in their lives. There's an unfulfilled need.

Some cultures tried to stop people from expressing themselves. In Mao's China, for example, the Communists tried to stop individual expression. For them the payoff was a society of equality. The problem of course is that it didn't work.

We should celebrate variety rather than conformity and allow people to express themselves. That we don't is more of our denial.

The thing is, I hate the celebrity architect thing. I just do my work.

I don't micromanage the interiors. People ask me to and I say no. I don't want to control everything.

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