People are searching for something they don't have in their lives. There's an unfulfilled need.

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 why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.

In Tokyo, London or Los Angeles people go into McDonald's and the restaurants are identical and people are comfortable. It's unthreatening.

I don't want to do architecture that's dry and dull.

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.

And I realized, when I'd come in to the meetings with these corrugated metal and chain link stuff, and people would just look at me like I'd just landed from Mars. But I couldn't do anything else. That was my response to the people and the time.