What's similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.

The idea for a building or an object can come up just as quick, but there is a big difference in process.

I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.

A brilliant design will always benefit from the input of others.

I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes.

Two years ago I focused on one apartment to see how many variations you can come up with in a given space with the same parameters. I would work on this repeatedly for days and you see that there is maybe seven hundred options for one space. This exercise gives you an idea of the degree at which you can interpret the organization of space, it is not infinite but it's very large.

In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran.