I promised a lot of people I'd slow down when I turned 80.

I'm of two minds about doing any interviews these days. It seems a lot of the world is out to play gotcha with me. I guess they always go after people these days. It's sport.

Artists dismiss me as an architect, so I'm not in their box, and architects dismiss me as an artist, so I'm not in their box.

In the Renaissance there wasn't a distinction. Bernini was an artist and he made architecture, and Michelangelo also did some great architecture.

It's a metaphor for what we're being told: "Just stay in the box, kid, don't muddy the water." Parents say it to their kids. Teachers say it. Schools do. And so people become immune to the sameness.

The present is filled with flotsam and irony and chaos and disorder in all arenas, political and sociological. I think we have to work in the present even if it's awkward, even if it's not necessarily good, even if we don't understand it ourselves. You only find out 10, maybe 20 years later what was going on.

I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.