When I was in architecture school at Princeton, the worst thing you could say about someone was that they were eclectic.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There is a profound ethic to architecture which is different from the other arts.
When I started designing in school, I discovered that I had a knack for it. I fell completely in love with architecture, and I remain in love with it.
There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics.
If architects weren't arrogant, they wouldn't be architects. I don't know a modest good architect.
I did a comparison of a school of architects known as the New York Five. I compared their articulation of wall surfaces, which I enjoyed very much.
But after the time there I'd had it with fashion again, so I left to go to architecture school in a summer course at Harvard, which didn't last very long.
Architecture has always been a very idealistic profession. It's about making the world a better place, and it works over the generations because people go on vacation and they look for it.
I didn't know what architecture was except that I lived in a house. I don't even think that I knew the word for a long time. My dad funneled me into engineering because it was his background.
I went to school for engineering, I studied jazz. So I always had this kind of creative side and technical side, and I thought architecture might be the way to combine them, so I went to architecture school in New York.
I taught at Princeton for 39 years, and the school of architecture on the campus is the worst building on the campus.