Architecture is like writing. You have to edit it over and over so it looks effortless

I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial.

I don't think that everybody in the planet should have a child. I've never had the desire I should have a kid.

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.

The current state of architecture and design requires extensive collaboration and an investigative attitude and we continue to research and develop new technologies.

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.

My earliest memory of architecture, I was perhaps 6 or 7 years old, was of my aunt building a house in mosul in the north of iraq. The architect was a close friend of my father's and he used to come to our house with the drawings and models. I remember seeing the model in our living room and I think it triggered something, as I was completely intrigued by it.