When I went to Harvard and studied planning, I found I didn't have the skills or the strength to become the kind of public person who could go out and lobby government agencies.
Most of our cities built since the war are bland. They're modernist, they're cold, and now architects want to go back to that.
There is a backlash against me and everyone who has done buildings that have movement and feeling.
On certain projects, on big public projects, people definitely are interested in making them greener, but on smaller projects with tight budgets it can be harder.
You've got to bumble forward into the unknown.
A well-designed home has to be very comfortable. I can't stand the aesthetes, the minimal thing. I can't live that way. My home has to be filled with stuff - mostly paintings, sculpture, my fish lamps, cardboard furniture, lots of books.
There are people who design buildings that are not technically and financially good, and there are those who do. Two categories - simple.
Democracy, obviously, is something we don't want to give up, but it does create chaos. It means the guy next door can do what he wants, and it creates a collision of thinking. In cities, that means people build whatever they want.
I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.
When I was a kid, my father didn't really have much hope for me. He thought I was a dreamer; he didn't think I would amount to anything. My mother also.
My father was an urchin that lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was part of a family of nine. I mean, there were times that were better and worse, but mostly, by the time we got to L.A., they'd lost whatever they had. And it was a sad time. And both he and I became truck drivers for different companies.
An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that.
Architecture is a service business. An architect is given a program, budget, place, and schedule. Sometimes the end product rises to art - or at least people call it that.
I make a model of the site. There are some obvious things: where the entrance should be, where the cars have to go in. You start to get the scale of it. You understand the client's needs, and what the client is hoping for and yearning for.
My only extravagance in life is my sailboat. I'm bonkers about that, but other than that, I don't spend money on myself.
I don't know how to overcome this perception that I'm extravagant.
A lot of people don't get it, but I design from the inside out so that the finished product looks inevitable somehow. I think it's important to create spaces that people like to be in, that are humanistic.
My father probably - he had flashes of creativity - he used to do store windows for fruit stores that he worked in and stuff.
There is stuff I would have liked to have done. But there are no sour grapes.
Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place, and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it.
