Nine out of nine architects start with a sketch, and then they say, 'What should we make it out of?' I start from the bottom up - what should it be made out of - and then I worry about what should it look like. The material, the color of the material, the way it feels, and the way you respond to it is every bit as valid as the form or the shape.

Architects have big egos. We like to think we're creating the pyramids and they're going to be around for thousands of years. And it's a joke because they're not even going to last our lifetime. I built a home for umpteen gazillion dollars on a gorgeous piece of property in Palm Beach, and 11 years later somebody else bought it and knocked it down.

I like the fact that I like to think out-of-the-box. Thinking out-of-the-box goes along with dressing out-of-the-box and living out-of-the-box. If you want to come up with a really original design idea and you want to capture a whole new design direction, perhaps the best way to arrive at that is not by acting and thinking and doing like everybody else. That's all.

After the motorcycle trips I take for one or two weeks, I have trouble getting back into a car, because I feel claustrophobic with all of that metal around me, and I can't see anything. I feel seriously dangerous in a car after riding on a bike, because your field of vision is so closed in. And then I think about all these little bourgeois people driving around in their cars - it's actually hideous. It cramps you on the head, it cramps you on the side, it puts you in a box on wheels... It's a terrible experience. Motorcycles are about opening the field of vision.

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