Some cultures tried to stop people from expressing themselves. In Mao's China, for example, the Communists tried to stop individual expression. For them the payoff was a society of equality. The problem of course is that it didn't work.

There is an order to our environment, a broader order.

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

You've got to bumble forward into the unknown.

I think the biggest problem with 'industrial' architecture is that it's lost its sense of humanity. Minimalist stuff drains all the humanity out of it. That idea works great for the money thing, but it doesn't work great for the feeling thing.

There is a backlash against me and everyone who has done buildings that have movement and feeling.

You have to do every detail on every bloody piece of the building. You have to know how the engineering works. You have to know how the fittings go together. You have to master the mechanical, electrical, acoustical - everything.