Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people’s lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic...

It’s very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future.

I’m a pushover. I make allowances for people if I like them.

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.

I will never give myself the luxury of thinking, ‘I’ve made it.’

I used to not like being called a ‘woman architect’: I’m an architect, not just a woman architect. Guys used to tap me on the head and say, ‘You are okay for a girl.’ But...

I loved London. In the 1970s… it was very exciting, really wild.

As a woman, you’re not accessible to every world.

My buildings are not particularly expensive. It is not a tin shed. If you want a tinny car, you pay for that.

In hospital, people should be able to have time to themselves.

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.

I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions.

Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and...

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.

I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It’s always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.

My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn’t be a dame.

Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places.

Women are always told, ‘You’re not going to make it, its too difficult, you can’t do that, don’t enter this competition, you’ll never win it,’ – they need confidence in themselves and people around them...

Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.

Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It’s very tough.

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.

I’m into fashion because it contains the mood of the day, of the moment – like music, literature, and art.

People in power, they’re so used to people kind of playing up to them.

Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space.

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....

I really believe in the idea of the future.

My friendships are very important to me.

Men think a woman should not have an opinion.

What’s nice about concrete is that it looks unfinished.

The funkiest housing in Holland is for low-income, and I think that’s very nice.

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.

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.

Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?

People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that’s ok.

My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress.

Contrary to popular view, I’ve never been patronized in the Middle East. Men maybe treat women differently, but they do not treat them with disrespect. They don’t hate women. It’s a very different kind of...

The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.

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 don’t think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don’t take any rubbish, and that doesn’t make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to...

I don’t particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.

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.

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.

My generation were all careerists.

I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.

What’s similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.

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.

I miss aspects of being in the Arab world – the language – and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it’s Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think,...

I made a decision when I was in school that I’d have a lot of male friends.

Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard.

All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.