I made a decision when I was in school that I'd have a lot of male friends.

In terms of form, all the projects interest me equally, although there are obviously large differences according to the scale and process of each project.

When I taught, all my best students were women.

As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality.

You really have to have a goal. The goal posts might shift, but you should have a goal. Know what it is you want to find out.

I'm trying to discover - invent, I suppose - an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same thing in a contemporary way. I started out trying to create buildings that would sparkle like isolated jewels; now I want them to connect, to form a new kind of landscape, to flow together with contemporary cities and the lives of their peoples.

Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.