Zaha Hadid

It's very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future.

I really believe in the idea of the future.

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.

If I wanted to do clothes or if I wanted to make a building or design a choreography, you are able to do that - they are all under a similar kind of design umbrella.

People say I design architectural icons. If I design a building and it becomes an icon, that's ok.

I am equally proud of all of my architectural projects. It's always rewarding to see an ambitious design become reality.

All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.

I really love Miami, but I don't think the architecture matches the city. It's a bit too commercial.

Half of architecture students are women, and you see respected, established female architects all the time.

Architecture is particularly difficult for women; there's no reason for it to be. I don't want to blame men or society, but I think it was for a long time, the clients were men, the building industry is all male.

I think about architecture all the time. That's the problem. But I've always been like that. I dream it sometimes.

Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It's very tough.

I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing.

As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality.

Of course I believe imaginative architecture can make a difference to people's lives, but I wish it was possible to divert some of the effort we put into ambitious museums and galleries into the basic architectural building blocks of society.

I don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.

Obviously for some people there is a big connection between music and the way you can create a space.