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.