But in 2001 an area for meditation and relaxation was created, away from the hubbub of the hectic streets of London; it also provided a welcome outside space for the adjacent Brunei Gallery.
Several countries have laid claim to the islands, situated just north of Brunei, and the naval corridor is an important shipping route for Australian vessels.
He was a consultant architect overseeing a polo club, the brainchild of the Sultan of Brunei, and he designed a medical centre in Dubai and a women's hospital in Qatar.
Not because he thought it might be rubbish, but because it was being held at the Beverly Hills hotel – one of many owned by the sultan of Brunei, who recently enacted some anti-gay and anti-adultery laws in his native land.
Andrews urged all the parties involved in the dispute – which include China, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines – to sign a code of conduct immediately, in a bid to ease tensions.
In Brunei, which has begun to implement a sharia-based penal code, "sodomy" is punishable by stoning to death.
"The costs of many new medical products are becoming unsustainable for even the wealthiest countries in the world," said Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), in August.On every frontSkirmishes are breaking out from Brunei to New England.
Of Vietnam's partners in the Association of South-East Asian Nations, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines also have partial claims in the sea.
APEC is an exercise in "concerted unilateralism", not a strand in the tangled noodle-bowl of bilateral and regional free-trade agreements.Launched by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore, the TPP is now led by America, and faces intense suspicion as a security alliance disguised as a trade negotiation.
So are good old-fashioned protectionist provisions such as one of the rules of origin in the apparel trade designed to ensure that, to avoid punitive American tariffs, low-cost garment-makers have to buy American yarn rather than non-TPP Chinese stuff.For a poor country such as Vietnam, or a tiny one such as Brunei, TPP negotiations place a huge strain on government capacity.
Of ASEAN members, Vietnam claims all the Chinese-controlled Paracel islands to the north, as well as the contested Spratly chain to the south, where the claims of Brunei, Malaysia, and, especially, the Philippines, overlap with China's.
