Knowledge Hub

Teaching was the base of my early reputation and stayed with me: the Sullivan Chair in Chicago, visiting chairs at Harvard and Yale, and my own masterclass in Vienna from 2000.

I studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving to London in 1972 to study at the Architectural Association, where I learned to think in diagonals.

At the Phaeno Science Center and BMW's Leipzig building I raised the volume on leaning concrete pylons and filled the ground beneath with life — a design method I repeated across my work.

Even as technology entered design, I kept hand-drawing my buildings and making models, so my designs were never limited to what the computer could do. My paintings exploded site and programme to find the form.

I never felt part of the male-dominated architecture establishment, and I chose the edge over the centre — an outsider's stance that shaped my creative work.

I could describe the core of my design style very simply: no 90-degree angles. The diagonal, born from the idea of an explosion that re-forms space, was my founding discovery.

In Innsbruck I replaced a 1926 Olympic ski jump with a 48-metre "organic hybrid" of bridge and tower, with a 150-seat panoramic cafe — and had one year to complete it before the next competition.

In Baku (2007–2013) I designed a cultural and conference centre — three auditoriums, a library and museum, 74 metres high — whose fluid form rises from the folds of the landscape. It won Design of the Year in 2014.

For the 2012 Olympics I designed the London Aquatics Centre, inspired by "the fluid geometry of water in movement": three pools and 17,500 seats under a parabolic roof resting on just three supports.