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It's a project that touched me as an immigrant and as a New Yorker.
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I believe that the idea of the totality, the finality of the master-plan, is misguided. One should advocate a gradual transformation of public space, a metamorphic process, without relying on a hypothetical time in the future when everything will be perfect. The mistake of planners and architects is to believe that fifty years from now Alexanderplatz will be perfected. -p.197
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There will be a competition for the memorial. And then it can be developed with trees, with planting. It can become a very beautiful place protected from the streets, because it is below. And it can be something very moving and very private.
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The truth is, the way you write music, it's a code. It has to be very precise. It's scientific, but ultimately it also depends on interpretation. It's very similar to how you grow a master plan: it's an objective document, but at the same time it is a lyrical document which allows through interpretation to become a harmonious work of art.
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When you're a kid with artistic yearnings brought up in the Bronx, you don't get fed up too easily.
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The foreign press seems obsessed with the Freedom Tower, as if it was the only thing going on here. In fact, we're trying to keep a huge juggling act in balance, with the tower as just one of the many balls in play.
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The Spiral Gallery may happen, too. It is not dependent on government funding.
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We all came to see that site. We all walked around it. It is already sacred.
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Be innovative. Don't listen to the tried and tested wisdom. Take a risk!
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Architecture is not just for the moment, it is not just for the next fashion magazine.
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Don't look at the superficial success, at the short-term success. Look at the deep spiritual questions that architecture has to answer. Who do you build for? Where? What should you build?
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Call Berlin. Drop everything we're doing. I have a complete vision of what should be.
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We live in a time of renaissance ... cities are coming back to life, after a long neglect.
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What is a habit? It’s just a shackle for ourselves.
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And it is very moving because one has to see the site not as just another site of development but it is a very special site. It is a site that souls and hearts of all Americans.
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And, yes, I love the process of building.
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You cannot suddenly make Lower Manhattan into a sad place because we saw such a dramatic loss of life. You have to balance the memory, which is so important, and use it as a kind of Archimedean Point to create a lively, incredibly interesting, and culturally significant piece of a city and neighborhood.
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Our lives are complex; our emotions are complex; our intellectual desires are complex. I believe that architecture … needs to mirror that complexity in every single space that we have, in every intimacy that we possess.
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I think to be creative you have to resist taking the easy path.
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We often judge cities by great public buildings. But we admire great cities because people live there in a beautiful way. You have to think about how each person will live there; you can't just think about abstract ideas.