Elizabeth Diller

Whenever I ask Siri for directions or a recommendation, I also ask her a trick question. Her answers are usually wacky. She scolds me for cursing, which I love, but she has no problem with ethics. If I say, 'Remind me to rob a bank at 3 P.M.,' she responds, 'Here's your reminder for today at 3 P.M.: Rob a bank. Shall I create it?'

I cannot read on a Kindle. I love the physical experience of holding a book, cracking it open, and the process of making the right half weigh less than the left half. I only read hardcover books because I like the resistance and the presence on a bookshelf.

In my thesis, I made an intellectual exercise out of creating a pair of buildings that were a repeat but slightly different - dissonant things make me uncomfortable.

The public brings our buildings to life, and we try to choreograph a lot of things, but our most successful work functions in unanticipated ways. Like the Blur Building. When little kids got in there, they cried or laughed or ran around. And no matter how much theory we put on top of it, it didn't matter: it worked.

My mother and father had been through the Holocaust. The family was wiped out. I grew up never knowing aunts, uncles, or grandparents.

We try to make buildings last long and be resilient but also be not so idiosyncratic that they can't change.

As a student, I hadn't really been interested in architecture at all, but when I started teaching, it grew into me - rather than me growing into it.

Theatre is real-time - you get that real-time audience reaction, which is fantastic. And with art pieces, people don't ever have to explain themselves. You can do something and really follow a research. With architecture, you have to be much more public. You have to build consensus. You have to work within the law. There are more complexities.

I hate digital calendars, so I use pen and paper or the palm of my hand for my daily schedule. I get much more satisfaction out of physically crossing things out than deleting.

Architecture is a technology. And it's involved in all of the different networks of systems that produce architecture - including politics, economics, social and cultural conditions. So architecture is already in technology.

Each project is torturous and joyful, and it's always an inspiration.

My interest was always to do interdisciplinary work with space. I thought of architecture as one strand in a multimedia practice.