Life in the Middle East is quite different from other places.
What's similar between Britain and America is the lack of good-quality civic buildings.
It's very important that historic cities are allowed to reinvent their future.
My father was a politician, and a very important politician, and one of the leaders of the Iraqi Democratic Party, who believed in progress.
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.