Green issues have been used as a marketing tool. Sometimes these green claims are completely meaningless.

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.

I don't micromanage the interiors. People ask me to and I say no. I don't want to control everything.

I don't make things with my hands, although I studied woodworking and made furniture.

I didn't have any interest in doing rich people's homes. I still don't.

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.

I attended a lecture by a gray-haired old man from Finland, who later I discovered was the architect Alvar Aalto. I was very moved. I wasn't interested in architecture, but it was a moving thing I've never forgotten.