My goal is to strip things down so that you need just the right amount of words or shape to convey what you need to convey. I like editing. I like it very tight.

Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn't occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.

I like to think of my work as creating a private conversation with each person, no matter how public each work is and no matter how many people are present

The process I go through in the art and the architecture, I actually want it to be almost childlike. Sometimes I think it's magical.

I do think the smaller-scale studio works have that incredible love of data crunching, whereas I would say the large-scale earthworks tend to be much more stripped-down. With the mappings, as connected as they are to a much more analytical idea, what's a map? And can I make a map about time? I think the first time was Hurricane Sandy, the flood plane; a moment in time, but indelibly marked on any of us who were in the city. Mapping time is something that I'm really interested in.

The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.

If we can't face death, we'll never overcome it. You have to look it straight in the eye. Then you can turn around and walk back out into the light.