Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space.
There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.
I don't use the computer. I do sketches, very quickly, often more than 100 on the same formal research.
The idea for a building or an object can come up just as quick, but there is a big difference in process.
I'm into fashion because it contains the mood of the day, of the moment - like music, literature, and art.
Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.
My buildings are not particularly expensive. It is not a tin shed. If you want a tinny car, you pay for that.
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 don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.
You have to be very focused and work very hard, but it is not about working hard without knowing what your aim is!
I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes.
Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.
When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.
You have to really believe not only in yourself; you have to believe that the world is actually worth your sacrifices.
I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it.
Indeed, our designs become more ambitious as we see the new possibilities created by the technology of other industries.
I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.
I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven.
I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.'
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.
For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.
The beauty of the landscape - where sand, water, reeds, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together - has never left me.
The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.
When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.
It would be very interesting to design objects for everyday life, something where the ideas that are expressed can be launched into society.
My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress.
The conservative values that are emerging, it may not effect architecture immediately but it will effect society and that's what worries me.
All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.
All the privileged can travel, see different worlds, not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.
In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran.
People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.
I think it's good if areas get upgraded and gentrified, as long as the people who always lived there can stay. But they get pushed out to some place.
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.
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.
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.
You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.
I don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.
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.
If I wanted to do clothes or if I wanted to make a building or design a choreography, you are able to do that - they are all under a similar kind of design umbrella.
The current state of architecture and design requires extensive collaboration and an investigative attitude and we continue to research and develop new technologies.
I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion.
It was such a depressing time. I didn't look very depressed, maybe, but it was really dire. I made a conscious decision not to stop, but it could have gone the other way.
Wherever I am in the world, my perfect day begins with waking up and heading to the beach or the pool or somewhere I can be semi-comatose. I just wake up and go to the sun.
If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it.
It's very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don't think they are burdened by their history.
I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong.
Malevitch discovered abstraction as an experimental principle that can propel creative work to previously unheard levels of invention; this abstract work allowed much greater levels of creativity.
Of course, my family helped me, my brothers helped me, but after I set up my own office I had to really help myself. Some people seem to think I had an oil well in my garden! It's a nice idea but not true.
I don't think people should do things because you know, 'I am turning this age, I must go have a husband.' If you find somebody and it works out then have kids, it's very nice. But if you don't, you don't.