When I First Came To Guangzhou In

Architecture Is Like Writing. You Have To Edit It Over And Over So It Looks Effortless

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.

I Am Quite Sensitive To Politics, Because You Know, As An Arab, An Iraqi, All Your Life, You Are Very Conscious Of It.

I've Always Been Interested In Combining Architecture With A Social Agenda, And I Really Think You Can Invest And Be Inventive With Hospitals And Housing.

Two Years Ago I Focused On One Apartment To See How Many Variations You Can Come Up With In A Given Space With The Same Parameters. I Would Work On This Repeatedly For Days And You See That There Is Maybe Seven Hundred Options For One Space. This Exercise Gives You An Idea Of The Degree At Which You Can Interpret The Organization Of Space, It Is Not Infinite But It's Very Large.