I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron's invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture.
Everyone thinks the Chinese government selected me. Never ever. I was selected by Herzog and de Meuron.
I am very happy working for my European brands. My legacy isn't going to be a museum. Yet I would be very good at it. It's so painful. It's like everything - the same old guys - Herzog & de Meuron, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano - they don't pick original people.
On working with director Werner Herzog: I have to shoot without any breaks. I yell at Herzog and hit him. I have to fight for every sequence. I wish Herzog would catch the plague.
When I am asked what I believe in, I say that I believe in architecture. Architecture is the mother of the arts. I like to believe that architecture connects the present with the past and the tangible with the intangible.
I won't put a product out that I don't 100 percent believe in. All of my products are made from the best ingredients and are made to make a woman feel like herself, only prettier and more confident.
Steve Jobs just made a product. He started off where a lot of people were skeptical of what he was doing, and he basically just focused on the product and making it the best he could, and really focused on what it was that these products would take into your lives.
Some people think architecture is about the genius sketch; I don't. Great architecture is a collaboration among a lot of people over a long period of time.
When a product is made, everyone hopes for the best. Whether it could have been better or not is more of an afterthought.
Everyone was saying, "Oh, Chumbawamba, they're crap, can't get arrested." But we had absolute faith in what we were doing, so we put our heads down and made the best album we possibly could. Then we got a deal based on the final product.
What's funny is that with my comedies I don't believe they're my best screenplays necessarily. They're just the ones that I wrote that I knew I could get financing, you know? I believe my other films could be better, but right now they're not being made. But they will eventually.
Excellence in our society is less a product of conflict and hostility than of collaboration.
I have to shoot without any breaks. I yell at Herzog and hit him. I have to fight for every sequence. I wish Herzog would catch the plague, more than ever.
When you go to a normal architecture firm they aren't going to be innovative in terms of their systems. They're not going to be thinking of the whole lifespan of this project, or how do we document every single light bulb, or every product, so that when a chair breaks in a conference room, we can replace it right away.
There's a Danish architecture firm called BIG. I love architecture, and I always check out their work; they're very good at reimagining the way we live. They put the human experience as the focus, with access to air and outdoor space.
I'm a firm believer in quality > quantity, and I think it's important to have high standards in any product creation product.