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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm a little more measured. That sense of urgency I thought accompanied things - it can take a little longer. You have to take the long view.

I love New York, but I'd felt like an outsider here.