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.

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

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

I found the material that people hated the most and used the most. So, I was going and try and see if I could play with it sculpturally.

We're physiologically wired differently.

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.

Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.