Book excerpt: Now available in a revised and updated paperback edition, this revealing volume features interviews with twenty of the world's most influential living architects in which they discuss their accomplishments, challenges, inspriations, and dreams. What makes an architect tick? What is the state of architecture today? How do architects view each other's work? No one can answer these questions bettern than the practitioners themselves. Here such distinguished figures as Cecil Balmond, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Philip Johnson, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, I. M. Pei, and others offer a wide-ranging assortment of persepctives on contemporary architecture and the architects' roles in shaping the state of art today. Each interview focuses on the unique contributions of its subject, and is accompanied by images of their most important works. With a no-holds-barred approach the author obtains interesting details about their ideas on architecture in general, from where they get their inspirations to what formative experiences led them to become architects in the first place. Updated with new images, this informative, accessible, and endlessly fascinating collection offers a chance to compare, contrast, and get to know the architects that are shaping the world we live in.