Design, refine and repeat, and keep learning all the way along. It sounds bland and pedestrian, but in fact, it's the reverse.

I'm never short of inspiration. There are always new ideas - and new adventures.

When building in a place that already has a dominant style, it's important to behave yourself. Look around; refer to what you see. In the mountains above Salzburg, I saw charming chalets and wildflower meadows. The chalets are cozy - I don't do cozy. The meadows are in a soft disarray - I don't do soft, and I don't do disarray. I do order.

The architect who first inspired me to follow this profession was Sir John Soane and his Regency home; well, his three homes, now a museum. The place is like an encyclopedia of paintings, antiquities, furniture, sculptures, and drawings.

My wife and family, to say the least, are the center of my life; they are my grounding. I don't want to sound schmaltzy, but they are my inspiration and you name it.

Having a dance background, I became used to rejection at an early age. Dance is very competitive, especially for a sensitive person like me. But I realized it's better not to take it so seriously. If you beat yourself up, it's hard to keep going.

I get a lot of inspiration from the audience feedback to our live shows.

Only when I saw I could be the first one to win five world cup races in a row did I get some extra motivation to go for it. And after winning five, I said to myself, 'Why not win them all?' The icing on the cake was the World Championship at the end.