Daniel Libeskind

Winning a competition in architecture is a ticket to oblivion. It's just an idea. Ninety-nine per cent never get built.

There are more people living in Lower Manhattan now than before the terrorist attacks. That's faith for you. There's such a strong spirit here.

Architecture is not just for the moment, it is not just for the next fashion magazine.

And you have to remember that I came to America as an immigrant. You know, on a ship, through the Statue of Liberty. And I saw that skyline, not just as a representation of steel and concrete and glass, but as really the substance of the American Dream.

In a strange way, architecture is really an unfinished thing, because even though the building is finished, it takes on a new life. It becomes part of a new dynamic: how people will occupy it, use it, think about it.

I think there is a new awareness in this 21st century that design is as important to where and how we live as it is for museums, concert halls and civic buildings.

Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It's based on wonder.

I believe that the idea of the totality, the finality of the master-plan, is misguided. One should advocate a gradual transformation of public space, a metamorphic process, without relying on a hypothetical time in the future when everything will be perfect. The mistake of planners and architects is to believe that fifty years from now Alexanderplatz will be perfected. -p.197