There are three ways to be Californian, suggests UCLA lecturer Max Kuo. In determining that Alvin Huang, principal of Synthesis Design + Architecture, is a third-way Californian, he charts his emergence as an architect via his postgraduate studies at the Architectural Association in London and working at the esteemed offices of Zaha Hadid and Amanda Levete, before moving to California to start his own practice and finding China particularly hospitable to his architecture.