During the Second World War, nobody built any concert halls or theaters. After the war, Lincoln Center was a very brave project because all those architects had never built a theater before. We've learned a lot since then about the nature of materials and the isolation that's required.
Please, don't use a cornice as a doorstop. At least put it somewhere where people will have to look up at it. Architectural details really ought to be displayed in the same relation to the viewer as they were originally intended.
Theater publicly reveals the human condition through appealing to both intellect and emotion. Architecture, whether lowly or exalted, can do the same.
I am an architect, first.
I get very excited when I go to a show - there are all these people who don't know each another who've come together to celebrate this amazing ritual. The making of community that theater provides is quite profound.
I live in a loft in a building I designed, but for my dream house I'd get Frank Gehry, just to see what he'd do.
When I went to India, I became absolutely obsessed with the idea of building a hotel in India. I've never done a hotel, and I'd love to do public spaces in that culture.
Basically, New York housing is designed by formula, with lots of restrictions.
When I was in architecture school at Princeton, the worst thing you could say about someone was that they were eclectic.
There was this enormous burst of sculptural creative juice in the nineteenth century, and all that stuff is just so decorative. Even in pieces cast from a mold, you get a more sensuous, handmade, individual sense from it.
