I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists. It's demeaning.

Childhood play is nothing more than an expression of our individuality and preparation for human interaction.

There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories - simple.

An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that.

You have freedom, so you have to make choices - and at the point when I make a choice, the building starts to look like a Frank Gehry building. It's a signature.

Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? I think I learned that from the artists, from my grandmother, from all the creative people I've spent time with over the years.

One of my unsung heroes is Erich Mendelsohn. I met him when I was a student and he was a cranky old man and very unpleasant. But if you go to his Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany you see an enormous intellect at work with a language that was personal and new. It has a sense of urban design and of theater and procession I hadn't seen before.