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

You have to be optimistic. I still have doubts and conflicts, but the bottom line is, I believe in the future.

People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

Cardboard is another material that's ubiquitous and everybody hates, yet when I made furniture with it everybody loved it.

I attended a lecture by a gray-haired old man from Finland, who later I discovered was the architect Alvar Aalto. I was very moved. I wasn't interested in architecture, but it was a moving thing I've never forgotten.

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.

The best advice I've received is to be yourself. The best artists do that.