Bilbao opened in 1997. It was only ten years later that I was asked to do another museum. A lot of other people got work because of Bilbao.

Most of our cities built since the war are bland. They're modernist, they're cold, and now architects want to go back to that.

Man, there's another freedom out there, and it comes from somewhere else, and that somewhere else is the place I'm interested in.

With computers we can work everything out from the beginning.

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

When people condemn me for designing iconic buildings in cities and not having an idea what a city is, they haven't done their homework. I started in urban design and city planning. It's just that when I got out of school there wasn't much of a market for that. There still isn't.

I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.