With the budget 10 times smaller than average — how do you make a country's World Expo pavilion rank amongst the Top 10? How do you make Shaolin monks fly? And how do you architect a sacred place for Latvians? You turn to nature.

Austris Mailītis is a Latvian architect working in the fields of architecture and art. He is an author of multiple large scale projects including Latvian Pavilion at the Expo 2010 Shanghai, Latvian National Open-air Stage in Riga and Shaolin Flying Monks Temple in China. He has been an architect of Latvian expositions in Venice Art Biennale in 2013 and 2015.

Austris Mailītis is a winner of numerous national and international awards. In 2011 he won Architect’s foot prize for his contribution to development of architecture in Latvia.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx