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so I got a job in an office on the Champs-Élysées, 69 Avenue Champs-Élysées. There I worked with André Remondet and he gave me the freedom to work on a lot of projects for ten months. Then I went back to LA. I didn’t want to go back to Victor Gruen. I started to work with some designers on the Seattle Fair that was going on and slowly I got some work. In Santa Monica we built a building with some friends. You became very aware when you remarried bought a pink bungalow in Santa Monica and transformed it into a mythical house. Was this conversion bringing you much work from other people? We only had $50,000! We were still living at the edge and starting my own practice in the house in Santa Monica paying $50 rent a month. There were two of, but we started to get some work. That was the beginning of my practice and we did some work with Jim Rouse. That was a great experience. You built your house and one of your sons built a house for you where you live now. Since then you built many thigs, so many projects all over the world the majority of which are to do with art and music, museums and concert halls. Do you especially like to do that or was it by chance? I like to do that. I am interested in classical music and jazz. As a kid in Canada I hired a jazz pianist and met Ernest Fleischmann who was working at the LA Phil. I worked on the Hollywood Bowl and won the Walt Disney competition against some formidable other architects. I won that competition and then a lot of good things happened and then a lot of bad things happened. With the Walt Disney Concert Hall for example these corporate Boards do not trust someone like me so they overboard you with expertise and ways that lead to nothing. It was a fight and we built it on budget: $207 million. I am very fastidious about budgets and technical delivery and no leaks. When IT came to Bilbao it was pouring with rain and they walked all around the building and they said: “Where are the pots for the leaks?” And I said, “There are no leaks.” On time, on budget and delivery as a building that can be used. Frank Gehry, you used interesting materials such as stainless steel and titanium. Stainless steel and titanium facades were new in those days. When it comes to the Guggenheim in Bilbao the museum building itself is as important as the collection it contains? It works for the collection it was designed for and it works so they are not complaining (laughs). I am always looking for the light, the responsive light. Since Minneapolis metal surfaces trying to capture the light and because it’s free. You don’t need decoration and it gives a humanized feeling. In Bilbao the budget was tight at $100 million. Stainless steel was the only thing I could afford but it rained a lot and the surfaces went dead on grey days. I had by chance put a piece of titanium outside my office in Santa Monica and it was golden in the rain. During the bidding process I put the titanium and the cost went down to below the stainless steel cost because the Russians dumped a lot of titanium on the market and that golden titanium light is one of the major assets. Now you are finishing the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi. Is there a big difference between the Bilbao Guggenheim and the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim? The final specification of materials is much different. It’s a different culture, 60 years old out of the desert. It is not formed. There is no specific language. Even if they have mosques with multiple domes we were not building a mosque but galleries. I made thirty models of different models of how the museum would work. When I was in Abu Dhabi I saw that people spent a lot of time under trellises in gardens having tea etc. I made a tepee like shape. I made ten and placed them in public areas outside the galleries. It was