Just as the essential structure of the atom is prescribed by nature, so, too, are there only so many ways to lay out a city, it seems, and most of them, weirdly, feel like atoms. Even in cities that sprawl, like Indianapolis or Oklahoma City or Little Rock, you’ve got your downtown nucleus, your gentrifying neighborhoods orbiting close to the center — artist and queer quarters — fading into outer circles of chains and strip malls and body shops constricted by the interstates.

“You feel that your life is being lost in a room where sound dies. [...] We need reverberation.” #architecture

This afternoon: Historical #architecture #HumayunsTomb #JantarMantar #Delhi #NewDelhi

“This is a unique collection. You can't go anywhere and get this." @Boston_Update #architecture #boston

I don't have any fantastic insight, but I think it's simply that cities to varying degrees are amazing palimpsests of history and cultures. They're coagulated together, a mixing of social norms. I like the temporal dislocation of cities, where you get 17th century buildings next to 21st buildings in London. The world is divided between people who like fractured mixed up stuff, and those who like clean aesthetic totality. I'm more the former.

The majority of humanity now live in cities. They are the site of most political and financial drivers - that's just a fact of economy. They are the site of this kind of chaotic aggregation of ideas that's going to translate into a sensation of the fantastic. That's why fantastic city fiction is so strong – it's about translating enchantment into a modern urban environment.

What is it about certain cities and places that fosters specific attitudes? Am I imagining that this is the case? To what extent does the infrastructure of cities shape the lives, work, and sensibilities of their inhabitants? Quite significantly, I suspect. All this talk about bike lanes, ugly buildings, and density of population isn't just about those things, it's about what kinds of people those places turn us into. I don't think I'm imagining that people who move to L.A. from elsewhere inevitably lose a lot of that elsewhere and eventually end up creating L.A.-type work and being L.A.-type people. Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

Every time I visit San Francisco I ask out loud "Why don't I live here? Why do I choose to live in a place that is harder, tougher and, well, not as beautiful?" The locals often reply, "You don't want to live here. It looks like a city, but it's really a small village. Everyone knows what you're doing" Oh, OK. If you say so. It's still beautiful.

I do know that when I cross the GG Bridge these days, I tend to glance over at those guard rails and safety wires with a different sort of appreciation, awareness and sighing sense of wonder. Here is this astonishing architectual icon set against one of the most beautiful backdrops in the world, all teeming with life and movement and possibility, and all quietly underscored with a dark thread of sadness and depression and death.

It is, of course, a metaphor, a microcosm, a symbol that's neither white, nor male, nor middle aged. It's simply universal.

"I fantasise about what the future could be in terms of aesthetic and psychology. It's the most difficult thing to do because you have to start from the past - your favourite architect, your favourite song - you take it all with you."

"I’ve been working all my career to try to redefine utopia in more positive terms – in more dynamic terms."

"Either you’re going to get that kind of architecture or you’re not. We’re thinking the music on the Web site will either speak to that buyer or not. It’s not for everybody. Just like any building is not for everybody."

"My prediction is that if we have a change in America, it won't be driven by politicians or architects but by the developers [...] So I think the one group we associate most with greed and inefficiency, it will lead the way in the future."

“There are three things you tend to carry — your keys, your wallet and your phone. I can see something in advertising in one place, scan it with my phone and recall it later when I am shopping. Or, imagine, I can buy it using my phone.”

"Big changes are the ones that grab the news and stir debate, rightly so. But small changes define our city as well, changes as small as the position of the sun. Particularly this time of year."

"At one point I was in Mexico with a portable 24-bit recorder holding up a mic to the ventilation system in a parking garage because it had such a clear ring to it."

"The opposite of westerns with their open range and limitless possibility, noir films are about confined spaces. They underscore a man's vulnerability and make it easy for him to be cornered."

"A piazza is not a plaza. The plaza is the theme park of the piazza; the plaza is the commercial version. A piazza is an empty space with no function. This is what Europeans understand."

"We try to show the world the argument the government has with itself. By beaming photons through the text, Jenny Holzer makes it less omnipotent, less powerful. She breaks it apart with beams of light and yet broadcasts what was a secret."

"Other than Uptown, the rest of the city is just as vulnerable to flooding as the Ninth Ward. Do we just salvage the Tchoupitoulas-to-St. Charles corridor and the French Quarter and call it a day?"

"I think New York doesn't need me, but I need New York. There is a tremendous perfume in the city. New York is a city of our time, unmistakably. This city is epic. The frenetic way, the movement of people, the temperament, the passion."

"I'm only interested in the cutting edge of architecture. Why do I change all the time? I think the world changes its mind faster than I do. I'm just trying to keep up."

Just remember, those phones' area code is five, one, zero ...

Hey, somebody pass me my copy of Gibson's "Virtual Light"?