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I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.
I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.
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.
The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.
When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don’t pry into other people’s business.
I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. This one chemistry teacher, she liked hanging out. I liked making explosives. We would stay after school and blow things up.
The role of art in society differs for every artist.
I left science, then I went into art, but I approach things very analytically. I choose to pursue both art and architecture as completely separate fields rather than merging them.
The only thing that mattered was what you were to do in life, and it wasn’t about money. It was about teaching, or learning.
You should be having more fun in high school, exploring things because you want to explore them and learning because you love learning-not worrying about competition.