To be an architect has been a life-long dream. Little did I know when asked at the age of 14 'what do you want to do when you grow up?' I said I wanted to be an architect. After 50 years I am still learning all what that means. Working together with so many people has been enormously gratifying. Being an architect means being a member of a fantastic team.

For me [ Giovanni Lorenzo ] Bernini, [Francesco ] Borromini, and [Donato] Bramante have been as significant as Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn. I still marvel at their works, which have a quality and a timelessness that I seek to have in our projects.

Each museum is different - the collection is different, the context is different, the relationship between the art and architecture is different.

When I am asked what I believe in, I say that I believe in architecture. Architecture is the mother of the arts. I like to believe that architecture connects the present with the past and the tangible with the intangible.

It's important to understand differences in scale and environment.

Winning the competition for Frankfurt's Museum of Applied Art in '79 opened the door to a number of projects in Europe, especially as we were invited to join many design competitions.

Any work of architecture that has with it some discussion, some polemic, I think is good. It shows that people are interested, people are involved.