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.

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.