The Pyramids are perfect, but you can't put the Pyramids in the middle of Manhattan. In the desert, the combination of light and form makes it perfect.
I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.
I came, I studied architecture in America, so my technical background's completely western. But my seventeen years, the formative years of one's life, and I can't say that the Chineseness in me is not there.
Even a beautiful piece of work can be overshadowed, destroyed, by something else.
To me, form doesn't always follow function. Form has a life of its own, and at times, it may be the motivating force in design. When you're dealing with form as a sculptor, you feel that you are quite free in attempting to mould and shape things you want to do, but in architecture, it's much more difficult because it has to have a function.
Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history, but it's not very deep.
