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.

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...

I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper.

When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.

Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society.

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...

I really love Miami, but I don’t think the architecture matches the city. It’s a bit too commercial.

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 about architecture all the time. That’s the problem. But I’ve always been like that. I dream it sometimes.

The commission process in America and England is different. In America, they do it through an interview process, and it’s really based on whether they like you or not. I mean, it’s nothing to do...

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.’

When I taught, all my best students were women.

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.

As a woman, I’m expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don’t design nice buildings – I don’t like them. I like architecture to have...

There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.

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.

Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.

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’ve always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic – you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the...

When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that’s why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing...

I have always appreciated designers who dare to reinterpret fabrics and proportions, so I follow the Japanese and Belgian designers. The pieces are so animated. When they lie still, they are one thing, but once...

I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it.

I find industrial cities exciting. I like their toughness.

I was always unusual-looking; I wouldn’t say beautiful.

I love driving around east London – it’s always full of surprises. Actually, I don’t drive myself – I like to be driven.

Architecture is particularly difficult for women; there’s no reason for it to be. I don’t want to blame men or society, but I think it was for a long time, the clients were men, the...

Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.

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...

I like music. Country, hip-hop, R&B, sometimes classical.