My whole career I've been interested by the distinction between an emotional and an intellectual response to an artwork.

It's good for art to make us think, to give us a shared experience that creates a dialogue, makes us talk to each other, including strangers.

The spaces I want to be in are nurturing and soft and saturated with color. Our cities don't have enough of that, and as humans we need it.

I believe people can have a profound experience by being surrounded by something beautiful - that's what I aim for. My sculpture is about the way you feel when you're standing under it and inside it. It's experiential art.

I recognize that it is through the engagement with my craft - by recognizing an idea and drawing it out, building physical models, collaborating with experts, constructing the sculptures at urban scale, and maintaining them through years of weather and interaction with the public - that a new art for cities has become real.

As a child, I always enjoyed building forts by stringing up bed sheets and clothes. I continue to be inspired by makeshift structures, including my own kids' forts and temporary architecture of all sorts.

You can't stumble upon something new and wonderful if you don't have time to stumble.