You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.

My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar.

I begin by imagining an artwork verbally. I try to describe in writing what the project is, what it is trying to do. I need to understand the artwork without giving it a specific materiality or solid form.

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 deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.

All my work is much more peaceful than I am.

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