The architect Paul Andreu has designed many airports all over the world, from Paris to Jakarta, Abu-Dhabi, Dar es Salam and Shanghai. In addition, he also designed the Osaka Maritime Museum and Beijing’s National Opera house. He is the recipient of many prizes, notably France’s Grand Prix National d’Architecture (1977) and the Crystal Globe awarded by the International Academy of Architecture (2006). He is a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts.

While moving house, Paul Andreu stared at his packed boxes representing a lifetime’s work as an architect, and wondered: ‘Why carry on working on architectural projects? I wanted to draw, write, but without thinking about architecture.
‘And yet that is what I ended up doing: carrying on. But I would also write: this book.
‘It would be a chaos of ideas and events. I like to think that my memory makes unconscious choices, that omissions are not the result of fatigue or age, but of a permanent and ever-changing desire to create. The selection I made in sorting out my documents was another factor. The third was this book, woven out of the two other strands, and as free as they were in seeking for and discovering a truth other than my own but that others would discover in reading my book.’

• With exceptional elegance and true literary talent, a great architect aims to make us discover and understand his work.
• Illustrated with many sketches and drafts, this book offers a unique insight into the meaning of architectural creativity.