I Find Industrial Cities Exciting. I Like

Two Years Ago I Focused On One Apartment To See How Many Variations You Can Come Up With In A Given Space With The Same Parameters. I Would Work On This Repeatedly For Days And You See That There Is Maybe Seven Hundred Options For One Space. This Exercise Gives You An Idea Of The Degree At Which You Can Interpret The Organization Of Space, It Is Not Infinite But It's Very Large.

People Say I Design Architectural Icons. If I Design A Building And It Becomes An Icon, That's Ok.

My Earliest Memory Of Architecture, I Was Perhaps 6 Or 7 Years Old, Was Of My Aunt Building A House In Mosul In The North Of Iraq. The Architect Was A Close Friend Of My Father's And He Used To Come To Our House With The Drawings And Models. I Remember Seeing The Model In Our Living Room And I Think It Triggered Something, As I Was Completely Intrigued By It.

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.'

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.