When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.

In terms of form, all the projects interest me equally, although there are obviously large differences according to the scale and process of each project.

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.

When I first came to Guangzhou in 1981, it seemed such a hard and dour place with everyone in Chairman Mao uniforms.

I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.

In Iraq, many of my female friends were architects and professionals with a lot of power during the 1980s while all the men were at war in Iran.

Architecture is unnecessarily difficult. It's very tough.