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I don't particularly like showing furniture on pedestals, but for whatever reasons you always have to in museums.
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Would they call me a diva if I were a guy?
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Being Iraqi taught me to be very cautious.
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The funkiest housing in Holland is for low-income, and I think that's very nice.
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My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn't be a dame.
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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.
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People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them.
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I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial.
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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.
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I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.
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I really believe in the idea of the future.
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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 mind that at all.
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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.
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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.
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Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard.
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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 four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unless you are crazy, would do that, but you are totally focused on the project.
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When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.
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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.
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People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok.
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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.
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I'm into fashion because it contains the mood of the day, of the moment - like music, literature, and art.
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In hospital, people should be able to have time to themselves.
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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 with whether you do the best scheme or the worst scheme.
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I made a decision when I was in school that I'd have a lot of male friends.