ARCHITECT/DESIGNER Lyndon Neri recalls attending a church when he was a child in Cebu. "The men would go up the staircase on the right, and the women on the left," he says. "For the longest time, I thought a church is built this way." Even today, when men and women can go up either staircase, he still goes up the one meant for men.

"Architecture has a way of changing the way a society thinks, which is why we can't just design and build buildings with reckless abandon. When a building is completed, it is there for years. You can't just demolish it after a few days," he says.

Mr Neri is one half of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, which he founded in 2004 with his wife Rossana Hu. The duo were in Singapore recently to give a talk at the World Architecture Festival, and also at Dream Interiors furniture store, where their pieces for Spanish brand De La Espada retail at. Mr Neri spoke solely to The Business Times.