Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It not just about qualifications to get a job. It's about being educated.

Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society.

I really believe in the idea of the future.

Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people's lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society.

All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.

Like men, women have to be diligent and work hard.

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.

Architecture is how the person places herself in the space. Fashion is about how you place the object on the person.

Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space.

I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.

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.

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.

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

I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.