I haven't taken any new projects in the past years - I told myself, if I cannot live long enough to finish it, I don't want it.

I didn't want to think about a project that I couldn't finish. That's a kind of temptation. One has to realize one's limitations. Why kid yourself? 

I haven't taken any new projects in the past years - I told myself, if I cannot live long enough to finish it, I don't want it.

At the beginning, I thought the best Islamic work was in Spain - the mosque in Cordoba, the Alhambra in Granada. But as I learned more, my ideas shifted. I traveled to Egypt, and to the Middle East many times.I found the most wonderful examples of Islamic work in Cairo, it turns out. I'd visited mosques there before, but I didn't see them with the same eye as I did this time. They truly said something to me about Islamic architecture.

I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity.

For Kips Bay, I had a wonderful client, William Zeckendorf, who was willing to gamble with me on using concrete and not brick for a high-rise apartment building. That was very innovative at the time.

When I got the opportunity to do the new wing [the Schauhaus] for the German Historical Museum, for instance, I didn't see it as an opportunity for my own ego, to do something so exciting that every architectural publication would want to put it on the cover. I accepted it because I knew it was going to be a very difficult project, and I wasn't sure I could do something exciting there.