Only through acknowledgment of the erasure and void of Jewish life can the history of Berlin and Europe have a human future.
When you're a kid with artistic yearnings brought up in the Bronx, you don't get fed up too easily.
And then, build a bustling wonderful city of the 21st century, with a restoration of a spectacular skyline, which Manhattan, of course, needs. So, that is really the design as a whole.
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.
I studied architecture in New York. So, really I was very moved, like everyone else, to try to contribute something that has that resonance and profundity of it means to all of us.
Winning a competition in architecture is a ticket to oblivion. It's just an idea. Ninety-nine per cent never get built.
