I really believe in the idea of the future.

I always thought I was powerful, since I was a kid.

Architecture is really about well-being. I think that people want to feel good in a space... On the one hand it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure. The intention is to really carve out of a city civic spaces and the more it is accessible to a much larger mass in public and it's about people enjoying that space. That makes life that much better. If you think about housing, education, whether schools and hospitals, these are all very interesting projects because in the way you interpret this special experience.

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

Some people really live and work within the same doctrine, the same diagram with the same logic.

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

It's not my duty as an architect to look at it.