Context is so important, not to mimic but to become part of the place. I wanted a building that acknowledges its surroundings.

Africa is an extraordinary opportunity at the moment

Buildings for me represent opportunities of agency, transformation, and storytelling. They are not just artifacts. There is this big tradition of buildings-as-artifacts - constructed artifacts - but for me they are these incredible sites of negotiation.

The first 10 years, I was just building just to understand what I was doing and I didn't trust my intuition to just produce. Then, in the last five years, I have really been reflecting on what I am producing and what it is doing.

In a way, I feel I have enough tools and knowledge now that when I build it has a very specific agency that's very conscious. It's no longer speculative it's really constructed. I'm very interested in how that consciousness, about how I am producing, is working within different conditions. It's like growing up.

I'm totally into architecture for all strata of society. High design should not just be for rich people.

The thing about architecture is that it's an art [you] simply learn more by doing more. It's one of those things that is really not an art about thinking, but doing. So in a way, what it has done is greatly intensify the way that I build.

For me, architecture is a social act.