What I have learned about museum buildings is that buildings have to have iconic presentations. The position of the art museum vis-a-vis other civic buildings needs to be hierarchal in the community. It has to be equal to the library and the courthouse.

I'm inspired by a lot of stuff. I always was interested in sculpture and painting and music and literature and all those things. There's no one thing.

If the room is friendly to a relationship between lecturer and audience, you feel everything - the tension, the appreciation. I think the audience feels it too.

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

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

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.

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.