Joshua Prince-Ramus discusses the challenges and opportunities of working abroad. Fred Bernstein: Did you work with a local architect? What do you look for in a local architect? Joshua Prince-Ramus: Due to the incredibly compressed schedule, we collaborated with a general contractor, moving directly from design development to shop drawings. The contractor would send drawings at the end of their day in Turkey; we would develop them and send them back for the start of their next day — it was almost a 24-hour cycle. On nearly all our other projects, we have collaborated with local firms. We seek true

Sometimes, form follows fortuity. In the 1990s, Rem Koolhaas developed an idea for a private house near Rotterdam; when that project was shelved, he adapted the concept to a much larger building — a concert hall in Porto, Portugal.