I found myself starting architecture with a deep social, Jewish, liberal conscience, and the belief that architecture is for the people. It was a do-gooder base; I was born and raised that way. I was for blacks, whites, Italians, Poles, whatever.

Just because you are an architect and make decent buildings does not mean that you can suddenly become a set designer for one of the best avant-garde dancers in the world.

I make a model of the site. There are some obvious things: where the entrance should be, where the cars have to go in. You start to get the scale of it. You understand the client's needs, and what the client is hoping for and yearning for.

My father always told me that I was going to be a failure - I think he was more talking about himself, but I didn't know it at the time.

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.

Green issues have been used as a marketing tool. Sometimes these green claims are completely meaningless.

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