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.

For me, architecture is a social act.

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.

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.

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

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.

Africa is an extraordinary opportunity at the moment