On New York subways in the 1980s: Riding on the IRT is usually a matter of serving time in one of the city's most squalid environments-noisy, smelly, crowded and overrun with a ceaseless supply of graffiti.

I think it's necessary to evaluate a skyscraper at multiple scales, since that's how we experience it: from right next to it on the street to from across the river, as well as at all kinds of points in between. It's important to think of it as an element in a larger skyline, but also as an element in an immediate streetscape.

Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Atlanta: those are all cities that really didn't get big, didn't hit their stride until the 20th century.

I try to do everything from thinking about big issues like how a building fits into the larger stream of architectural history to practical issues such as how it feels to navigate your way through its interior.

The taste of people with large bank accounts tends not to be on the cutting edge.

A suburban mall turned vertical.

Wright's building made it socially and culturally acceptable for an architect to design a highly expressive, intensely personal museum. In this sense almost every museum of our time is a child of the Guggenheim.