China is building cities for a 20 to 40 percent increase in population. India is quickly growing. The carbon footprints of that and other development around the world are overwhelming.

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

Cardboard is another material that's ubiquitous and everybody hates, yet when I made furniture with it everybody loved it.

Generally in our world, whether in architecture or almost anywhere else, we devalue the artist, and schools at whatever level shut people down.

There is stuff I would have liked to have done. But there are no sour grapes.

I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.

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