Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It not just about qualifications to get a job. It's about being educated.

The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.

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.

You have to really believe not only in yourself; you have to believe that the world is actually worth your sacrifices.

Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space... On the one hand it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure. The intention is to really carve out of a city civic spaces and the more it is accessible to a much larger mass in public and it's about people enjoying that space. That makes life that much better. If you think about housing, education, whether schools and hospitals, these are all very interesting projects because in the way you interpret this special experience.

My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress.

I've always been interested in combining architecture with a social agenda, and I really think you can invest and be inventive with hospitals and housing.