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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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" My father was a socialist, so he would have thought that I shouldn't be a dame. "

" I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper. "

" Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time. "

" 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 building industry is all male. "

" I made a decision when I was in school that I'd have a lot of male friends. "

" I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions. "

" 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 like music. Country, hip-hop, R&B, sometimes classical. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde. "

" 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. "

" I don't think I am that tough, actually. Well, tough in the sense that I don't take any rubbish, and that doesn't make me very popular, frankly. I mean, because some people say something to me, and I just tell them off. I mean, why should I put up with it? "

" I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical moments in these places. "

" My generation were all careerists. "

" I was always unusual-looking; I wouldn't say beautiful. "

" When I taught, all my best students were women. "

" 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 some raw, vital, earthy quality. "

" People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok. "

" I loved London. In the 1970s... it was very exciting, really wild. "

" 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. "

" Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places. "

" 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 mentality. "

" I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it. "

" 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 sun. "

" I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial. "

" Men think a woman should not have an opinion. "

" 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 be wrong. "

" As a woman, you're not accessible to every world. "