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 mentality.

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.

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.

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 particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.

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. But if you don’t, you don’t.

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.

Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It’s very tough.

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 no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women.

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 see the incredible amount of need from other women for reassurance that it could be done, so I don’t...

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 me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it?

I don’t think that everybody in the planet should have a child. I’ve never had the desire I should have a kid.

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

I find industrial cities exciting. I like their toughness.

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

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 my garden! It’s a nice idea but not true.

My generation were all careerists.

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

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

When I taught, all my best students were women.

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

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

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

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

My friendships are very important to me.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 building industry is all male.

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

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

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

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

Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.

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 some raw, vital, earthy quality.

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, ‘This river has flown here for thousands of years.’ There are magical moments in these places.

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

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

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 architectural building blocks of society.

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.

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

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

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

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 you stand them up or wear them, they become something else.

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 sun.

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

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

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

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