Like many things in life, this was almost a coincidence or an accident, or maybe not at all. Maybe it was not a coincidence, maybe it was destined to be. But we have certainly, we did not at the time that we were commissioned to do Marina Bay, design a casino or a complex of hotels and convention centres.

I met Sheldon Adelson, the chairman of Las Vegas Sands, at Yad Vashem, where he was a donor. And he complimented me on the project and told me that he's looking for an architect for Singapore. Now, it's interesting to note that he already had an architect, a Las Vegas architect, and that the government, in short listing them, told them that if they're interested, they are not, they better rethink the selection of architect because they want a contemporary Singapore building, not a reproduction of a Las Vegas theme building. So, based on that, he offered me the job and we dove right in there, with four months to go. And I took it as an opportunity to show you could create a wonderful urban meeting place for the twenty first century. Public gallery as open to the water, integrate parks and urban space and shopping, get cultural and commercial facilities together. All the things we say about, we talk about in theory, in the books.