To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom.
My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.
Art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make those works than the monuments or the architecture.
I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.
How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.
If we can't face death, we'll never overcome it. You have to look it straight in the eye. Then you can turn around and walk back out into the light.
It was a requirement by the veterans to list the 57,000 names. We're reaching a time that we'll acknowledge the individual in a war on a national level.
I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. I applied almost as a lark. Then, when I got there, I was the dumbest person in your class.
A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.
Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn't occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.