Architect Eugene Tssui: ‘I would like to have been a benevolent dictator’

My personal style signifier is my walk. People often tell me they can see me from a mile away because of it: I walk like an athlete. Nowadays I am best known as a “biologic architect”, using nature’s form in everything I create, but I am also a four-time Senior Olympics gymnastics champion and an eight-time world champion in amateur boxing. 

The last thing I bought and loved was a large gilded picture frame for a drawing of a building I did. Gold makes everything look regal and aristocratic. I recently discovered a shop in Berkeley that specialises in unique frames from different cultures. I’m always searching for what might be a better idea or item for whatever I’m doing. 

A place that means a lot to me is Mount Shasta in northern California, known as the first chakra of the planet and a place to originate new ideas. It’s about a four-hour drive from where I live in the Bay Area – arriving is like entering a natural wonderland. There are underground caves, waterfalls, deep lakes and rivers – and no light pollution, so you can stare into the galaxies just by looking up. I’m working on three sites there and plan to design a “laboratory” where people from all over the world can gather to discuss solutions to the Earth’s problems. 

And the best souvenir I’ve brought home is a bag of dried horse dung from Mongolia. The Mongolian, or Przewalski’s, horse is one of the oldest species of horse on the planet; it goes back some 160,000 years. I was outside of Ulaanbaatar staying in a Mongolian ger [traditional tent] when I came upon a young colt that had lost its mother during birth. I befriended this horse and its owners told me about burning horse dung for incense and fires for cooking. The horses there eat pure grass, so it just smells of that. I’ve been giving it as gifts to friends because it’s organic and kind of unforgettable.  

The best book I’ve read recently is Dr Will Tuttle’s The World Peace Diet, a history of the world’s economy told through the killing of animals for food. It took the author five years to write, has been reprinted more than 100 times in 17 languages and, when I read it, I was enthralled. It’s made me vegan. 

My style icon is Mother Nature. Who can compete?

The best gift I’ve given is enthusiasm. When friends feel lost or depressed, I’m there to tell them “fine – feel lost, feel depressed and then move forward”. At the end of the day, you’re responsible for yourself and you have to find what makes you happy. The enthusiasm to not give up is really important to me. And it’s timeless.

My favourite room in my house is my living and music room, which is one shared space. It’s bathed in sunlight and has a beautiful view of San Francisco Bay. There’s a bas-relief covering one wall – a drawing of two bulls and a goat to represent the star signs of my three children, and structural reinforcement beams designed to resemble tree branches (we’re in an earthquake zone). People often knock on my door just to take a peek inside.

The last music I downloaded was from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, arguably the greatest jazz album of all time. I listen to it every day. 

I started designing my own clothes in high school. I took a sewing class in my senior year and liked it so much that I just kept going. I make all kinds of coats, capes and suits from vegan materials, mostly with super-high collars to keep the heat in. I get some sniggers, but generally people are curious. They think I’m an ambassador or a quasi-Superman. Many people are dying of loneliness. I’ll tell you, if you start designing your own clothes, the people will flock.

It’s important to be active – my next challenge is to learn Olympic wrestling

I have a collection of Chinese swords, which I’ve been acquiring since I started working there part-time in 1999. I must have more than 100, including some knives. I search for them in downtown enclaves across the country, but if you ask anyone selling things on the street, sure enough they will have a sword somewhere from a grandfather or distant relative. My best find is a curved cavalry sword for use on horseback, made sometime between 1850 and 1900. I would love to publish a book about them one day. 

In my fridge you’ll always find glass jars of spring water with lemon slices, which is what Gandhi always drank [with honey]. There’s nothing that compares to it. I feel constantly energised. 

My favourite building I’ve designed is my parents’ house in west Berkeley [the Fish House], which I built in the ’90s. Architectural Digest described it as the “safest house in the world” due to its low centre of gravity. It is 1m to 2.5m underground, so its footings are very stable, and in the event of flooding it has pipes that feed into an underground storm drain that leads to the San Francisco Bay waters. For a long time the project was violently opposed because it was seen as embodying the idea of “the individual against the masses”. People felt that it was an eyesore. The neighbourhood has since changed and new people have moved in, many because they actually want to be near it. It’s now seen as a cool place to live.

An indulgence I could never forgo is the sauna. I’m in there for an hour, four days a week.  

The last item of clothing I added to my wardrobe was a cropped silver rain jacket, one of my most ergonomic designs. Silver minimises reflection back into the atmosphere and maximises insulation. The sleeves come out from the waist, which traps body heat all the way to your hands. I sourced the quilted fabric on a trip to China and worked with a tailor – a Mr Ming Hai Zhou – there to develop it. It’s embellished with the ancient Chinese symbol for longevity. 

The work of art that changed everything for me was a drawing of a submarine done by my mother when I was about seven. I had taken a book out from the library and she traced the image out for me perfectly. I thought it was the most amazing creation I had ever witnessed. All I wanted to do from then on was draw, draw, draw.

I recently rediscovered the importance of maintaining your physical health: strength, balance, flexibility and mobility. I suffered a back injury last autumn and was in excruciating pain for almost two months straight. After the age of 30, muscles decrease by one per cent every year; by the time you’re 60, you’ve lost 12 per cent of your strength. So as we get older, it’s important to be more active, not less. My next challenge is to learn Olympic wrestling.

My wellbeing guru is the ultra-endurance athlete David Goggins. He wrote a book about his journey to becoming a Navy Seal and setting the world record for the most pull-ups. He did 4,030 in 17 hours. He’s a remarkable man who changed his entire life through physical exertion. There’s nothing performative about him. I like people who tell it like it is: this is what we’ve got to do, let’s go out and do it. 

My wellness routine is also regimented: I usually get to the gym at six o’clock, and once a week I go for an hour-and-a-half run with at least 10 100m sprints. I love seeing how far my body can go.

In another life, I would like to have been a benevolent dictator – not because I want to control people, but because I would love to have the power to make a difference in people’s lives by passing certain laws: to make the world more compassionate and to enforce the discipline people need to be healthier versions of themselves. I hope I would not become evil. 

The best bit of advice I ever received was to question your assumptions and go beyond them. I’ve been criticised by my professors and peers throughout my whole career. I was expelled from school for saying that architects should search for a new language of design that aligns with the intelligence of nature. People said, “Organic architecture will never happen, nobody’s going to want this.” But as the world has changed, everything I have been working on has suddenly become relevant. My recent exhibition at MoMA in New York, Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism, was proof of that. It’s an emotionally restorative thing when people finally acknowledge that your message was correct. Never give up.

The best gift I’ve received is being needed. There were two elderly ladies who wanted to create the most remarkable ecological community they could think of – a series of residences made from local materials, and free from toxic HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning) systems – and were looking for someone who could do it. They found me through some friends. To have someone searching for what I can offer them is the greatest, and you often get to know wonderful people in the process.  

The way I work is highly interdisciplinary. Being a musician – I really enjoy the piano – has helped me become a better architect, educator and athlete. Why do you have to be good at just one thing? If you’re interested in something, take it as far as you can. I remember being criticised for pursuing an interest in art and clothing design because it was felt I wasn’t going to then develop as an architect. But with architecture, you can translate a lot of ideas from elsewhere into structure and form.  

My favourite buildings are the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. Two very different kinds of structures, but I’m drawn to the sense of space and natural light that illuminates everything inside both.

The one artist whose work I would collect if I could is Da Vinci, particularly his notebooks. He was an extraordinary thinker and worked across so many different fields. Da Vinci taught us that nothing is impossible.

When I need to feel inspired I stop, lie down and sleep. If I could have one superpower it would be the ability to go to sleep in an instant. It’s so important to rest; there are a lot of things to see, smell and hear when you’re not rushing around.