About Zaha Hadid: Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid is an Iraqi-British architect. In 2004 she became the first woman recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and received the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011.
Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It not just about qualifications to get a job. It's about being educated.
Education, housing and hospitals are the most important things for society.
I miss aspects of being in the Arab world - the language - and there is a tranquility in these cities with great rivers. Whether it's Cairo or Baghdad, you sit there and you think, 'This river has flown here for thousands of years.' There are magical...
When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.
There are so many great galleries and museums in London, but they can be very crowded during the day.
I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper.
It's very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don't think they are burdened by their history.
I think it's good if areas get upgraded and gentrified, as long as the people who always lived there can stay. But they get pushed out to some place.
Of course, my family helped me, my brothers helped me, but after I set up my own office I had to really help myself. Some people seem to think I had an oil well in my garden! It's a nice idea but not true.
I really believe in the idea of the future.
It's very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future.
Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places.
I am quite sensitive to politics, because you know, as an Arab, an Iraqi, all your life, you are very conscious of it.
I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong.
In hospital, people should be able to have time to themselves.
All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.
For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.
People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them.
I love driving around east London - it's always full of surprises. Actually, I don't drive myself - I like to be driven.
I like music. Country, hip-hop, R&B, sometimes classical.
