You have freedom, so you have to make choices - and at the point when I make a choice, the building starts to look like a Frank Gehry building. It's a signature.

When I start my class I ask the students to write their signatures on pieces of paper and put them on a table. I have them look at them, and I point out, "They're all different, aren't they? That's you, that's you, that's you, that's you."

My father probably - he had flashes of creativity - he used to do store windows for fruit stores that he worked in and stuff.

People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

Everything - design and technology and materials - has changed since the World Trade Center was built. A lot of it has to do with computers, which allow us to be far more efficient as well as structurally sound.

Look, architecture has a lot of places to hide behind, a lot of excuses. "The client made me do this." "The city made me do this." "Oh, the budget." I don't believe that anymore.

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