I am sure that as a woman I can do a very good skyscraper.

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.

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

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.

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

My earliest memory of architecture, I was perhaps 6 or 7 years old, was of my aunt building a house in mosul in the north of iraq. The architect was a close friend of my father's and he used to come to our house with the drawings and models. I remember seeing the model in our living room and I think it triggered something, as I was completely intrigued by it.

When I taught, all my best students were women.