How do you design it so that people can form a space of their own, and feel quiet and contemplative?

When I was in the Army, the unit I served in, you could never stop. It was a volunteer unit, and there was a fairly high rate of attrition. The people who stayed through are the people who were either great at it or the people who just didn't know how to stop. And I fell into that second category.

As architects we are often involved in the concrete-steel-and-glass aspect of it, but cities are social structures, and to be involved in imagining the future of cities and the type of relationships and the types of places that we're making is something that intrigues me very much.

There are bound to be differences in any artistic collaboration with landscape elements, or theater, of lighting elements.

It sounds really over the top to say you're responsible for the city of New York, but I do feel responsibility to the city of New York, to this country, to people everywhere. So many people were affected by the events of September 11, and I feel this is one of the ways that that event will be understood and defined.

For two years nobody talked about anything other than the name arrangement. There was no fund-raising and no progress being made on construction and design.

New York was a place I wanted to live and work all along. If I wasn't going to live in Israel, I had to live in New York.