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That's Why You Go Into Architecture - At Least I Did - To Do Things For People. I Think Most Of Us Are Idealists. You Start Out That Way, Anyway.

-Frank Gehry

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That's Why You Go

Frank Gehry

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That's Why You Go Into Architecture - At Least I Did - To Do Things For People. I Think Most Of Us Are Idealists. You Start Out That Way, Anyway.

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We Have Always Created - Music, Literature, Art, Dance. The Art Around Us - Or Lack Of It - May Be A Measure Of How We're Doing As Individuals And As A Civilization, So Maybe We Should Be Worried.

Artists Dismiss Me As An Architect, So I'm Not In Their Box, And Architects Dismiss Me As An Artist, So I'm Not In Their Box.

One Of My Greatest Influences Is The Italian Artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

In The Art World Robert Rauschenberg Had Been Combining Common Materials That People Thought Was Art And Beautiful, And It Was. If He Could Do That, I Could Emulate Him.

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 Found The Material That People Hated The Most And Used The Most. So, I Was Going And Try And See If I Could Play With It Sculpturally.

The Best Advice I've Received Is To Be Yourself. The Best Artists Do That.

Democracy Is A Problem And We Don't Want To Get Rid Of It.

My Father Always Told Me That I Was Going To Be A Failure - I Think He Was More Talking About Himself, But I Didn't Know It At The Time.

The Message I Hope To Have Sent Is Just The Example Of Being Yourself. I Tell This To My Students: It's Not About Copying Me Or My Logic Systems. It's About Allowing Yourself To Be Yourself.

You Never Build The Perfect Building. Only Allah Is Perfect. Life Is Such. You Make Decisions On Conclusions, Then Some Guy Invents Something Else And The World Changes. That's Comforting. There's No One Way To Use Museums, No One Way To Do Art. That Also Means There Is No One Way To Build Museums.

People Live And Work In Uninspiring Environments, But Look Inside Those Rooms. Look At The Painted Walls And The Decorations. People Rebel Even In The Most Controlled Office Environment In Which They're Not Allowed To Do Anything. You See The Little Bulletin Board In Front Of A Person's Desk With Their Photos, Clippings, Cartoons And Whatever Else.

That's Where You Have To Look For Your Inspiration. Don't Separate The Rest Of Your Life - Who You Are, What You Love - From Your Work.

Rest Of Your Life

Generally In Our World, Whether In Architecture Or Almost Anywhere Else, We Devalue The Artist, And Schools At Whatever Level Shut People Down.

Each Project, I Suffer Like I'm Starting Over Again In Life. There's A Lot Of Healthy Insecurity That Fuels This Stuff.

There Are A Great Many Things About Architecture That Are Hidden From The Untrained Eye.

Ninety Percent Of The Buildings We Live In And Around Aren't Architecture. No, That's Not Right - 98 Percent.

I'm Of Two Minds About Doing Any Interviews These Days. It Seems A Lot Of The World Is Out To Play Gotcha With Me. I Guess They Always Go After People These Days. It's Sport.

One Of My Unsung Heroes Is Erich Mendelsohn. I Met Him When I Was A Student And He Was A Cranky Old Man And Very Unpleasant. But If You Go To His Einstein Tower In Potsdam, Germany You See An Enormous Intellect At Work With A Language That Was Personal And New. It Has A Sense Of Urban Design And Of Theater And Procession I Hadn't Seen Before.

I Used To Sketch - That's The Way I Thought Out Loud. Then They Made A Book Of My Sketches, And I Got Self-conscious, So Now I Don't Do It Much.

The Culture Of France Is Unique Because It's A Culture That Has A High Priority On The Arts, More Than Any Other Place In The World In Our Time Since Greece. So As A Practicing Artist, If You Will, This Is Home Ground. They Love Us, So Music, Literature, Art Continues To Be The Center.

We Should Celebrate Variety Rather Than Conformity And Allow People To Express Themselves. That We Don't Is More Of Our Denial.

If I Knew Where I Was Going, I Wouldn't Do It. When I Can Predict Or Plan It, I Don't Do It.

We Deny Our Nature To Build And Create And Then Wonder Why There Is So Much Alienation And Dissatisfaction.

The Present Is Filled With Flotsam And Irony And Chaos And Disorder In All Arenas, Political And Sociological. I Think We Have To Work In The Present Even If It's Awkward, Even If It's Not Necessarily Good, Even If We Don't Understand It Ourselves. You Only Find Out 10, Maybe 20 Years Later What Was Going On.

If You're Serious About Being An Architect, You've Got To Learn How To Take Responsibility. It's Not Fluff. You Have To Do Every Detail On Every Bloody Piece Of The Building. You Have To Know How The Engineering Works. You Have To Know How The Fittings Go Together. You Have To Master The Mechanical, Electrical, Acoustical - Everything.

We Don't See The Banality, But We Accept Banality. We Accept It As Inevitable, And It's Not.

Your Best Work Is Your Expression Of Yourself. Now, You May Not Be The Greatest At It, But When You Do It, You're The Only Expert.

When People Condemn Me For Designing Iconic Buildings In Cities And Not Having An Idea What A City Is, They Haven't Done Their Homework. I Started In Urban Design And City Planning. It's Just That When I Got Out Of School There Wasn't Much Of A Market For That. There Still Isn't.

Childhood Play Is Nothing More Than An Expression Of Our Individuality And Preparation For Human Interaction.

Green Issues Have Been Used As A Marketing Tool. Sometimes These Green Claims Are Completely Meaningless.

A New Idea Is Obsolete In Seconds, Right? I Just Said It And Now It's Obsolete.

The Fact Is I'm An Opportunist. I'll Take Materials Around Me, Materials On My Table, And Work With Them As I'm Searching For An Idea That Works.

The Message I Hope To Have Sent Is Just The Example Of Being Yourself.

Anybody I Talk To Agrees That Maybe 2 Percent Of The Building Environment Since The War, We Could Call Architecture.

Everyone Has A Desire, If Not A Need, To Use Their Individual Signatures. Whenever People Meet To Talk About A Project, Even Stuffy Old Businessmen, They Say They Want To Create Something New.

When You Were A Kid, If You Went To The Montreal Forum Or A Hockey Game At Maple Leaf Gardens, Which I Did, There Was A Great Feeling. The New Stadiums Don't Have It. Why Don't They Have It? Building Codes.

I Can't Just Decide Myself What's Being Built. Someone Decides What They Want, Then I Work For Them.

I'm A Do-gooder Liberal.

People Are Searching For Something They Don't Have In Their Lives. There's An Unfulfilled Need.

I Have Always Thought That L.a. Is A Motor City That Developed Linear Downtowns.

Some People May Say My Curved Panels Look Like Sails. Well, I Am A Sailor, So I Guess I Probably Do Use That Metaphor In My Work - Though Not Consciously.

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.

There Is Stuff I Would Have Liked To Have Done. But There Are No Sour Grapes.

Not Every Person Has The Same Kinds Of Talents, So You Discover What Yours Are And Work With Them.

It's Not New That Architecture Can Profoundly Affect A Place, Sometimes Transform It.

You've Got To Bumble Forward Into The Unknown.

Famous Inspirational

I Never Said I Was Opposed To The Leed Program Or To Green Building - I'm Not.

I Think You've Got To Accept That Certain Things Are In Process That You Can't Change, That You Can't Overwhelm. The Chaos Of Our Cities, The Randomness Of Our Lives, The Unpredictability Of Where You're Going To Be In Ten Years From Now - All Of Those Things Are Weighing On Us, And Yet There Is A Certain Glimmer Of Control. If You Act A Certain Way, And Talk A Certain Way, You're Going To Draw Certain Forces To You.

The Safety Requirements, Which Are Necessary, Spread Everything Out And Push People Farther And Farther Away From The Stage And From Each Other.

Ideas Exist In The Marketplace; They Are Thrown Out For Everyone To Use.

I Think My Best Skill As An Architect Is The Achievement Of Hand-to-eye Coordination. I Am Able To Transfer A Sketch Into A Model Into The Building.

I Used To Read More When I Was A Kid Than I Do Now. It Was All Sort Of Fuel For The Fire To Teach You How To Think And How To Make Things And It Informed The Architecture That I Was Doing. It's Better Coming In With That History And That Kind Of Knowledge And Depth Of Understanding Of Humanity That Is Very Important For Building Buildings - For Understanding People And How They Should Live And How You Could Make Your Lives Better And Stuff Like That.

I Love Working. I Don't Know What The Word Vacation Means.

When I Start My Class I Ask The Students To Write Their Signatures On Pieces Of Paper And Put Them On A Table. I Have Them Look At Them, And I Point Out, "they're All Different, Aren't They? That's You, That's You, That's You, That's You."

Your Work May Be Great And Not Make Its Way Into The Big Picture... Like Van Gogh... So Who's To Say What's Good And Bad?

Let The Experience Begin!

We Live And Work In Boxes. People Don't Even Notice That. Most Of What's Around Us Is Banal. We Live With It. We Accept It As Inevitable. People Say, "this Is The World The Way It Is, And Don't Bother Me."

I Attended A Lecture By A Gray-haired Old Man From Finland, Who Later I Discovered Was The Architect Alvar Aalto. I Was Very Moved. I Wasn't Interested In Architecture, But It Was A Moving Thing I've Never Forgotten.

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.

There Are Places That Are So Designed They're Unlivable.

As Much As We Pretend Otherwise, We Want What's Comfortable, And We're Afraid Of The Different. We're Afraid Of Change.

Afraid Of Change

If You Know Where It's Going, It's Not Worth Doing.

Man, There's Another Freedom Out There, And It Comes From Somewhere Else, And That Somewhere Else Is The Place I'm Interested In.

I Don't Want To Do Architecture That's Dry And Dull.

My Father Probably - He Had Flashes Of Creativity - He Used To Do Store Windows For Fruit Stores That He Worked In And Stuff.

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.

Art Is About People. I Think The Discussion About Whether Architecture Is Art Or Not Is Lamebrain.

Chicago's One Of The Rare Places Where Architecture Is More Visible.

I Don't Know Why People Hire Architects And Then Tell Them What To Do.

I'm Preprogrammed Emotionally And Intellectually Not To Go Down Blind Alleys. I Don't Waste The Time. I Automatically Edit Out Whatever's Impractical.

Well, I've Always Just - I've Never Really Gone Out Looking For Work. I Always Waited For It To Sort Of Hit Me On The Head.

Looking For Work

Some Cultures Tried To Stop People From Expressing Themselves. In Mao's China, For Example, The Communists Tried To Stop Individual Expression. For Them The Payoff Was A Society Of Equality. The Problem Of Course Is That It Didn't Work.

My Buildings Are All On Budget.

I Don't Micromanage The Interiors. People Ask Me To And I Say No. I Don't Want To Control Everything.

I Didn't Have Any Interest In Doing Rich People's Homes. I Still Don't.

Childhood Play Is Nothing More Than An Expression Of Our Individuality And Preparation For Human Interaction. Everybody’s An Artist. Unfortunately We Don’t Treat Them As Such.

It's A Metaphor For What We're Being Told: "just Stay In The Box, Kid, Don't Muddy The Water." Parents Say It To Their Kids. Teachers Say It. Schools Do. And So People Become Immune To The Sameness.

Those Who Say Only Artists And Architects Can Create Are The Ones Who Are Elitist.

There's A Drive In Us To Express Ourselves In Some Way Or Form. We Pick Up Whatever Material Is Available. It's Primitive. Kids See Sand On The Beach, Build Something And Show Their Parents: "look What I Did, Mama." It's Necessary To Us.

I Found Myself Starting Architecture With A Deep Social, Jewish, Liberal Conscience, And The Belief That Architecture Is For The People. It Was A Do-gooder Base; I Was Born And Raised That Way. I Was For Blacks, Whites, Italians, Poles, Whatever.

I'm Going To Design The Container And Interior Spaces. You Bring Your Own Stuff To It And Make It Your Own.

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.

Creativity Is About Play And A Kind Of Willingness To Go With Your Intuition. It's Crucial To An Artist. If You Know Where You Are Going And What You Are Going To Do, Why Do It? I Think I Learned That From The Artists, From My Grandmother, From All The Creative People I've Spent Time With Over The Years.

I Refuse To Work Unless I Get Paid, So I Don't Get A Lot Of Work Sometimes.

I Am Just Relating To The World We Live In. I See Some Order In It, Even Though It Looks Like Mush.

Everything - Design And Technology And Materials - Has Changed Since The World Trade Center Was Built. A Lot Of It Has To Do With Computers, Which Allow Us To Be Far More Efficient As Well As Structurally Sound.

It Should Begin Much Earlier With Arts Education In The American School System, Which Is Sadly Deficient.

I Do My Best To Choose Carefully. If I Don’t Feel That Collaboration Is Going To Happen, I Say No. Think About It. These Projects Can Involve A Five-to-seven-year Partnership. If You Don’t Feel Comfortable With Someone, You Can’t Get Rid Of Them. I Just Walked Away From A Job For That Reason. Every One Of These Projects Is An Emotional Investment, Like Falling In Love. You’ve Got To Believe In It And You’ve Got To Like The People You Work With.

Falling In Love

With Computers We Can Work Everything Out From The Beginning.

People Say, "this Is The World The Way It Is, And Don't Bother Me." Then When Somebody Does Something Different, Real Architecture, The Push-back Is Amazing. People Resist It. At First It's New And Scary.

In Tokyo, London Or Los Angeles People Go Into Mcdonald's And The Restaurants Are Identical And People Are Comfortable. It's Unthreatening.

What I Have Learned About Museum Buildings Is That Buildings Have To Have Iconic Presentations. The Position Of The Art Museum Vis-a-vis Other Civic Buildings Needs To Be Hierarchal In The Community. It Has To Be Equal To The Library And The Courthouse.

Time Is Just A Blur For Me. I Don't Know What - I Don't Even Know Where I Am Sometimes.

In The End, The Character Of A Civilization Is Encased In Its Structures.

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.

Picasso Could Use Everyone's Paintings And Transform Them Into His Own. He Was Using Ideas From All Of His Contemporaries.

Your Best Work Is Your Expression Of Yourself.

We Live And Work In Boxes. People Don't Even Notice That.

The Rap On Me On The Street Is The Opposite - I'm Impractical, I'm More Expensive, It's Too Complicated And I Run Over Budgets, Which Isn't True. None Of That's True And There's Plenty Of Documentation If Anybody Needs It.

You've Got To Like The People You Work With.

It's Not New That Architecture Can Profoundly Affect A Place, Sometimes Transform It. Architecture And Any Art Can Transform A Person, Even Save Someone. It Can For Children - For Anyone. It Still Does For Me.

You Have To Build Up A Credibility Before The Support Comes To You.

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.

I Am Obsessed With Architecture. It Is True, I Am Restless, Trying To Find Myself As An Architect, And How Best To Contribute In This World Filled With Contradiction, Disparity, And Inequality, Even Passion And Opportunity.

I'm Inspired By A Lot Of Stuff. I Always Was Interested In Sculpture And Painting And Music And Literature And All Those Things. There's No One Thing.

You See A Lot Of So-called Architecture That Part Of The Ego Trip Overpowers The Functionality And The Budget And All That Stuff.

Look, Architecture Has A Lot Of Places To Hide Behind, A Lot Of Excuses. "the Client Made Me Do This." "the City Made Me Do This." "oh, The Budget." I Don't Believe That Anymore.

Take What Comes Your Way. Do The Best With It. Be Responsible As You Can And Something Good Will Happen.

You Can't Ignore History; You Can't Escape It Even If You Want To. You Might As Well Know Where You Come From, And You Might As Well Know That Everything Has Been Done In Some Shape Or Form.

For Me, Every Day Is A New Thing.

Many People Put A Green Button On Their Collar And Feel Good, Just Like A Lot Of People Put An American Flag On Their Lapels And Feel Patriotic. It's Not Enough.

You Can Look Anywhere And Find Inspiration.

People Ask Me If I'm An Artist Or An Architect. But I Think They're The Same.

I Think The Biggest Problem With 'industrial' Architecture Is That It's Lost Its Sense Of Humanity. Minimalist Stuff Drains All The Humanity Out Of It. That Idea Works Great For The Money Thing, But It Doesn't Work Great For The Feeling Thing.

That's What You Have To Find In Architecture. You Have To Find Your Signature. When You Find It, You're The Only Expert On It. People Can Say They Like It Or Don't Like It. They Can Argue About It, But It's Yours.

Generally People Are Afraid. They Pretend They Aren’t; It’s Part Of The Denial. We’re All Part Of It. As Much As We Pretend Otherwise, We Want What’s Comfortable, And We’re Afraid Of The Different. We’re Afraid Of Change. It Happened In Los Angeles, Too, When The First Models Of Disney Hall Were Shown. You Should Have Heard The Outcry From The Public, Critics And Press. It Was Called “broken Crockery,” “outlandish” And Blah Blah Blah. Of Course Now The Feeling Is Different.

Ultimately You Can't Repress Individuality, Even Though You Can Try.

I Promised A Lot Of People I'd Slow Down When I Turned 80.

The Whole Can Be Greater Than The Sum Of It's Parts, That We All Have Something To Put In The Pie To Make It Better, And That The Collaborative Interaction Works.

Architecture Is A Small Piece Of This Human Equation, But For Those Of Us Who Practice It, We Believe In Its Potential To Make A Difference, To Enlighten And To Enrich The Human Experience, To Penetrate The Barriers Of Misunderstandin G And Provide A Beautiful Context For Life's Drama.

We're Physiologically Wired Differently.

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.

The Idealism [in Architecture] Is In The Formal Arrangement, The Relationship To The City, The Use Of Materials That Are Available To Me. That's Where I Say Our Powers Are Limited.

I Don't Know Whose Box I'm In, And I Don't Really Care.

The Thing Is, I Hate The Celebrity Architect Thing. I Just Do My Work.

And I Realized, When I'd Come In To The Meetings With These Corrugated Metal And Chain Link Stuff, And People Would Just Look At Me Like I'd Just Landed From Mars. But I Couldn't Do Anything Else. That Was My Response To The People And The Time.

Liquid Architecture. It's Like Jazz - You Improvise, You Work Together, You Play Off Each Other, You Make Something, They Make Something. And I Think It's A Way Of - For Me, It's A Way Of Trying To Understand The City, And What Might Happen In The City.

Many People Put A Green Button On Their Collar And Feel Good, Just Like A Lot Of People Put An American Flag On Their Lapels And Feel Patriotic. It's Not Enough.i'm Not Dismissing It.

Here We Are Surrounded By Material That's Being Manufactured In Unimaginable Quantities Worldwide And Is Used Everywhere. I Don't Like It, No One Likes It, And Yet It's Pervasive. We Don't Even See It.

Everybody's An Artist. Unfortunately We Don't Treat Them As Such.

I Like The Idea Of Collaboration - It Pushes You. It's A Richer Experience.

For Me, Every Day Is A New Thing. I Approach Each Project With A New Insecurity, Almost Like The First Project I Ever Did. And I Get The Sweats. I Go In And Start Working, I'm Not Sure Where I'm Going. If I Knew Where I Was Going I Wouldn't Do It.

I Would Like To Make A Building As Intellectually Driven As It Is Sculptural And As Positive As It Would Be Acceptable To Hope.

Erich Mendelsohn's Drawings Are Expressive And Beautiful. If He'd Had The Computers We Have Now, Everything I've Done He Would Have Done Before Me. I Would Have Had To Figure Out Something Else.

The Game Is If The Orchestra Can Hear Each Other, They Play Better. If They Play Better And There's A Tangible Feeling Between The Orchestra And The Audience, If They Feel Each Other, The Audience Responds And The Orchestra Feels It.

In An Ideal World, Pressure Should Come From Below And From The Top.

In The Renaissance There Wasn't A Distinction. Bernini Was An Artist And He Made Architecture, And Michelangelo Also Did Some Great Architecture.

When You Agree To Collaborate, You Agree To Jump Off A Cliff Holding Hands With Everyone, Hoping The Resourcefulness Of Each Will Insure That You All Land On Your Feet.

I Work From The Inside Out.

There Is A Backlash Against Me And Everyone Who Has Done Buildings That Have Movement And Feeling.

I Don't Think All Buildings Have To Be Iconic, But The History Of The World Has Shown Us That Cultures Build Iconic Buildings For Their Major Public Buildings.

Just Because You Are An Architect And Make Decent Buildings Does Not Mean That You Can Suddenly Become A Set Designer For One Of The Best Avant-garde Dancers In The World.

I Don't Make Things With My Hands, Although I Studied Woodworking And Made Furniture.

The Back Of Saint Peter's Is One Of The Finest Pieces Of Architecture I've Ever Seen.

The Architect Borromini's Quattro Fontane, A Little Church In Rome, Is One Of The Most Beautiful Rooms In History.

China Is Building Cities For A 20 To 40 Percent Increase In Population. India Is Quickly Growing. The Carbon Footprints Of That And Other Development Around The World Are Overwhelming.

Carbon Footprint

There Is An Order To Our Environment, A Broader Order.

Our Environment

There Are People Who Design Buildings That Are Not Technically And Financially Good, And There Are Those Who Do. Two Categories - Simple.

I Don't Know How To Overcome This Perception That I'm Extravagant.

When I Was A Child I Could Do Math And Art, So I Had Left- And Right-brain Capabilities. But I've Seen My Children, Who Are More Right-brained, Struggling. My Son Was Told He Wouldn't Make It To College, But He Dogged It Through And Ended Up Being Accepted By 10 Major Art Schools After The High School Advisor Said, "please Don't Apply. You're Going To Be Disappointed." That Kid's An Artist Now.

I Hate The Word Starchitect. Stuff Like That Comes From Mean-spirited, Untalented Journalists. It's Demeaning.

If The Room Is Friendly To A Relationship Between Lecturer And Audience, You Feel Everything - The Tension, The Appreciation. I Think The Audience Feels It Too.

It's Not Elitist To Acknowledge That Everyone Has A Unique Signature And Everyone Is Different.

I've Been Told I Have The Biggest Ego In The World And That It Manifests Itself When You Come To Me And Say, 'i Don't Like This' Or 'i Want A Change'... And That I Relish That Because My Ego's So Big I Think I Can Solve Whatever You Throw At Me And Make It Even Better. I Enjoy The Interaction And The Challenge.

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.

You Have To Do Every Detail On Every Bloody Piece Of The Building. You Have To Know How The Engineering Works. You Have To Know How The Fittings Go Together. You Have To Master The Mechanical, Electrical, Acoustical - Everything.

Bilbao Opened In 1997. It Was Only Ten Years Later That I Was Asked To Do Another Museum. A Lot Of Other People Got Work Because Of Bilbao.

Generally People Are More Impressed With The Services And The Comfort Issues Than The Design.

If The General Public Demanded Better, They'd Get Better, Because The Marketplace Responds To The Public's Needs And Desires.

Computers Allow Architects To Remain Parental Instead Of Being Marginalized By The Contractors And Managers.

You Have To Be Optimistic. I Still Have Doubts And Conflicts, But The Bottom Line Is, I Believe In The Future.

I Know I Draw Without Taking My Pen Off The Page. I Just Keep Going, And That My Drawings I Think Of Them As Scribbles. I Don't Think They Mean Anything To Anybody Except To Me, And Then At The End Of The Day, The End Of The Project, They Wheel Out These Little Drawings And They're Damn Close To What The Finished Building Is And It's The Drawing.

You Have Freedom, So You Have To Make Choices - And At The Point When I Make A Choice, The Building Starts To Look Like A Frank Gehry Building. It's A Signature.

That's Why You Go Into Architecture - At Least I Did - To Do Things For People. I Think Most Of Us Are Idealists. You Start Out That Way, Anyway.

Architecture And Any Art Can Transform A Person, Even Save Someone. It Can For Children - For Anyone. It Still Does For Me.

Architecture Should Speak Of Its Time And Place, But Yearn For Timelessness.

If You're Serious About Being An Architect, You've Got To Learn How To Take Responsibility.

Most Of What's Around Us Is Banal. We Live With It. We Accept It As Inevitable.

Cardboard Is Another Material That's Ubiquitous And Everybody Hates, Yet When I Made Furniture With It Everybody Loved It.

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