My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.

My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.

Some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think.

Architecture is like a mythical fantastic. It has to be experienced. It can't be described. We can draw it up and we can make models of it, but it can only be experienced as a complete whole.

You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it.

I'm as much interested in the form-making as well as getting you to think about what we're doing to the world around us.

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.