Right after 9/11 it looked as if the idea of a huge skyscraper might be considered obsolete. It came back, but I think that's more closely connected to the rise of Asian and Middle Eastern cities in the world economy (Dubai, Shanghai, Taipei, etc.) than anything else.

New York grew up before the automobile. And even though it's full of cars, its shape and form didn't get created around the automobile.

New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring - it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence.

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.

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

Buildings don't exist to be pinned, like brooches, on the front of bigger structures to which they bear only the most distant of relationships.

Infrastructure creates the form of a city and enables life to go on in a city, in a certain way.