Formentera was a kind of paradise to be brought up. I was born in the late 1970s. My parents moved there in the late 1960s, in the very early days, as part of a group of foreign, slightly hippie, but alternative, people who were looking for a different lifestyle than what was on offer in the bigger European cities. They still live on the island today. As for my childhood, it was fantastic. I can’t think of any downside. It was a very free, outdoors lifestyle…It was a different era back then. A bit more naive and kind of lovely. My dad's an architect and my mom was working in fashion, so they always had a more structured idea of family, of education and the things that they wanted me and my sister to achieve, which meant eventually moving away from the island to chase our dreams. My sister and I  went to the same schools in the UK when we were older, and from then on we went to university and did all of that, but I think that Spain was always home to me, which is why I came back. 

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We've been here for about 12 years – me, my wife and our kids. Previously we were in London, and for the same reasons a lot of people moved to Mallorca, we had kids and we decided that mainly the city lifestyle really wasn't for us as parents. We want to parent our kids without all the stresses that cities have for young kids and because I was brought up in the Balearics. Formentera was never really an option because it is just not feasible in terms of logistics. I initially had to fly back and forth to the UK almost every week. I don't do that anymore, thank goodness, but I did for awhile, so it was just not viable.

I was always fascinated to a certain degree by what he did when I was younger, although I wouldn't have known how to express that. I don't think I ever really told my dad that I wanted to do what he does, but as a kid I enjoyed going to his building sites, and I was always fascinated with making things like model airplanes, following the instructions and all the details that are involved with that process. Whenever I talked about being an architect, people would assume I must be related to Frank Lloyd Wright. Obviously we're not, but there was always that kind of joke that if your name is Wright, you have to be an architect. But I think he's definitely one of my influences. I guess by kind of name association I found I was kind of drawn to his work and particularly some of the houses he has done in North America, which are still groundbreaking today and always were a kind of strong influence of mine. Another important influence was Philippe Starck, who I worked for during my early studies. More than his architecture, it was how he worked. His methodology and how his studio functioned, and how he'd turn up and do sketches by hand and then he had this other team of people who were extremely talented at drawing and sketching ideas and all of it was quite analog rather than digital back then. And he was working on everything from a chair to a car at the time he was designing a boat for a Japanese billionaire. And so the variety of projects that were being discussed was super interesting.

Yes. That was my first proper job after graduating and it was great. I still see it as a bit of a postgraduate degree in some ways because of the intensity and how we were treated as junior staff, which is like a student, with long hours, lots of different tasks. But obviously with a very talented bunch of people and I think it is still one of the top places to work if you're wanting to work in that superstar architect realm, which he already was 25-30 years ago. One of the first projects I worked on was the competition for the Twin Towers and then also for a massive competition for Milan Fair and it was fascinating. 

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You often work on competitions when you are part of  a big architecture firm, so I had the experience of working on two or three of those as part of my job, and then Lorenzo and I became mates and, I can't even remember how,  but we found out about another competition which was this Dubai Marina competition and we decided to do a pitch together in our spare time and it turned out that we won, which was kind of unexpected but we received a little financial prize. It was not very much, but it was enough to give us a bit of a confidence boost to decide to give it a go alone. So we set up Dos Architects on the back of that and soon after we both left Foster + Partners. We were young, in our mid-20s, so way too young really normally to start your own practice…but we took the risk.

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We started working in West Africa thanks to one of our clients in London who was from there. We’ve worked in several other places, including Dubai and Ethiopia, but this is where we have probably had the most success in terms of foreign projects. We’ve now built up a nice network of clients, mainly in the Ivory Coast and Senegal. We partner with local firms who do the oversight and engineering. It’s a fascinating part of the world to work in and also travel. I go about every two-months and I always come back full of joy and inspired for other work I do here. It’s a place where we can try different things as well, because they are more open to new ideas and there are less restrictions than in Europe.

So we have three branches of the firm now. There's the London office which is still there but it's more as a hub management place. And then we've got a small Italian office in Rome, where Lorenzo is based, and a small Mallorca office. I am mainly focused on Mallorca and Africa projects.

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For us, Mallorca is mainly private  residential projects, each very different and from clients from all over. Some projects are in urban areas, where we can do more contemporary  architectural designs, but most of it is in more rural parts of the island, where the planning laws are very restricted in terms of what you can do and it's all about respecting the Mallorca tradition and architecture, which is  also very interesting as well. It's something I complain about often because it kind of restricts a lot of things and it slows down the whole process, but ultimately I think it's the right approach in terms of protecting the kind of architectural heritage of the island.

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There is obviously a big problem. I follow it in the news but I'm also aware of it through the Spanish Architectural Registration Board, which I'm a member of in Mallorca. They recently issued some data in terms of the amount of projects that are licensed and basically the majority of projects that have been built are single family homes. And they tend to be in the luxury to high luxury bracket, compared to most of Spain, where you'd see there's a much better ratio between multi-story apartment buildings and single dwellings. Here it is totally skewed compared to everywhere else. There's almost no apartments being built and this is genuinely a problem for young families who want to work and live here.

I really think that there needs to be some structural change and that can only come from the government where they designate areas in Palma, etc. for a certain type of building and give incentives for building more affordable  housing that is not speculative or aimed at foreign buyers. If you leave it up to private developers, there is little financial motivation for social or multistory housing as they are in it for commercial purposes. In addition, the government makes a lot of money with the luxury homes being built or renovated because of taxes and fees. They can essentially pay two technicians’s salaries with one license. 

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I think one of the more fun things that we're doing, and this is not in Mallorca, but we're doing a house for a very famous African footballer in the Ivory Coast. We're doing his family home on a beautiful site. Unfortunately, I can't show it right now because we are still settling on the final designs.