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.

I think my desire to imagine a future for this site came out of trying to come to terms with the emotions that day aroused.

I believe that people are fundamentally are decent. And, yes, you will have people that sometimes will misbehave.

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

I pushed the process forward by saying, 'We should do this, this, and this right now. Please find the budget for me to find a structural engineer, a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, so we can do the preliminary work.

You can just never desist. You have to always push back, whatever the pressures put on you.

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.