You see a lot of so-called architecture that part of the ego trip overpowers the functionality and the budget and all that stuff.

The whole can be greater than the sum of it's parts, that we all have something to put in the pie to make it better, and that the collaborative interaction works.

In the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures.

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

That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.

People ask me if I'm an artist or an architect. But I think they're the same.

Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.