Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. "The client made me do this." "The city made me do this." "Oh, the budget." I don't believe that anymore.

Generally people are more impressed with the services and the comfort issues than the design.

If you're serious about being an architect, you've got to learn how to take responsibility.

Anybody I talk to agrees that maybe 2 percent of the building environment since the war, we could call architecture.

I'm going to design the container and interior spaces. You bring your own stuff to it and make it your own.

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.

Everything - design and technology and materials - has changed since the World Trade Center was built. A lot of it has to do with computers, which allow us to be far more efficient as well as structurally sound.