Manhattan has generated a shameless architecture that has been loved in direct proportion to its defiant lack of self-hatred, has been respected exactly to the degree that it went too far.

That has been another interesting discovery: that basically a city [Lagos] could recover from a really deep, deep, deep pit.

The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction.

The work in S, M, L, XL was almost suicidal. It required so much effort that our office almost went bankrupt.

The institutions are working better now, the banks are much more functional. At this time, 1997, there were no mobile phones! It's a whole different thing now with mobile phones: technology has created a form of regulation, because people can actually talk to each other a lot more.

Lagos was not very inviting even to Lagosians. It was considered a no-go zone, almost in its entirety.

The luxury of our position now is that we can almost assemble any team to address any issue.