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just intuitive. The Abu Dhabi group came to LA and looked at the thirty models and looked at the ones with these blue teepees and they said: “Mr Gehry you are a genius. You understand our culture perfectly – these blue tents are perfect for our aesthetic. The mosques have multiple domes and they are used to that kind of language. Accidentally I made a gesture they understood. Now you are also opening a new building in Paris for Bernard Arnault and the Louis Vuitton Foundation and in Arles the LUMA building for Maja Hoffmann? In Paris the client Bernard Arnault is very smart and very knowledgeable. A pleasure to be working with. He is very involved with me and my team. In France in the first two weeks you do the designs and then the beaux art experts expect you to make that building. I was not expecting that. We had three or four very sculptural models and he picked one and I didn’t realise when he picked them that was the building which required two skins for the building and this was a breakthrough with the Paris authorities. I showed the Mayor the glass version with a glass surround and the museum is inside in there like a greenhouse and then they approved of the height. So we had a two part building with an outer skin of glass. Arnault is a sailor as am I. We were interested in billowing sails and I tried to make that work. Did you have similar problems in Arles? No, Luma was different. Maja was open to jump in and we did some low rise and one with the tower. Forty or fifty models of variations with her. A different kind of collaborator. My clients are collaborators. In Arles the site is a Roman city with two large amphitheatres almost on the same street of this building. I took cues from the amphitheatres and the warehouses where they were doing photographic and art galleries. The building I was doing was more a centre, a book store, some galleries. It is like a sculpture in the middle of this Roman city? With all the buildings I was playing with the light. In Arles van Gogh made some great paintings, including “Starry Night”. There is a different kind of light to other places. We made the façade out of beautiful stainless steel panels – very reflective but not egregiously reflective – a soft reflection. The panels are separate panels and we could make them so they shift slightly. Reflections of light change all day long. The reflection and colour pattern changes all day until the night. As the light is disappearing you get the Starry Night sky colour. The light is there and I made it possible to see it the way that van Gogh saw it. Light is very important in all your work, including the smaller projects such as the pavilion at Château La Coste? I designed that project for the Serpentine Galleries in London when my daughter was dying of cancer and my son took over the project at the Serpentine and built the big wood pieces. I didn’t see it until way after they sold those pieces to Paddy McKillen and he took it to La Coste. You build in Paris, in Korea, in Prague, in Germany, all over the world. How is it to work in many places even if you make a concert hall, or is it different to work in different places? To work with Maja Hoffmann was a great experience. I respect her very much and she was completely involved in the project. Meeting Arnault and his family has been a lot of fun for me. Now I make handbags. I design anything! From cognac to a cardboard chair at MoMA? MoMA is not interested in my work, but they did my chair. They say you are a deconstructivist architect. Are you?