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

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.

I would like to make a building as intellectually driven as it is sculptural and as positive as it would be acceptable to hope.

You never build the perfect building. Only Allah is perfect. Life is such. You make decisions on conclusions, then some guy invents something else and the world changes. That's comforting. There's no one way to use museums, no one way to do art. That also means there is no one way to build museums.

That's what you have to find in architecture. You have to find your signature. When you find it, you're the only expert on it. People can say they like it or don't like it. They can argue about it, but it's yours.

In an ideal world, pressure should come from below and from the top.

I don't know how to overcome this perception that I'm extravagant.