I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do.

Everyone has a desire, if not a need, to use their individual signatures. Whenever people meet to talk about a project, even stuffy old businessmen, they say they want to create something new.

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

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

If you're serious about being an architect, you've got to learn how to take responsibility. It's not fluff. 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.

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.