Overlooking the Pearl River, the 600-meter Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower, designed by Dutch architect Mark Hemel, is the city's new landmark. Photos by Zou Zhongpin / China Daily

Hemel, his wife Barbara Kuit and their two daughters, at their home in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

My China dream | Mark Hemel

Designer of the Canton Tower Mark Hemel has decided Guangzhou is the place to move forward with family and career. He talks to Xu Jingxi in Guangzhou.

He had looked at more than 50 apartments before settling for the one he now lives in with his wife and three children. That's because this one has a great view of his best work in the city. "Canton Tower looks beautiful from this angle," Dutch architect Mark Hemel says, as he stands in the garden of his new home.

"It is the landmark of my career," continues Hemel, who completed the design of the 600-meter-high Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower in 2004.

"I had never participated in such a big and complex project before. Almost every architect dreams about designing a city landmark."

In August 2011, the 46-year-old architect, who has grown attached to the Guangzhou landmark and the city, made a decision. He moved his family from Amsterdam to Guangdong's provincial capital.

"The project is meaningful not only to my career but also my life. I have devoted eight years of my life to it," says the architect, who's known for his unconventional designs, best exemplified by the Canton Tower.

It has the smooth elegant silhouette of a woman keeping vigil by the Pearl River, the city's mother river.

Now that Hemel has achieved his dream of designing a city icon, he wants to move on to other projects and a chance to design culturally significant buildings like museums and theaters. He is convinced China is where he will get the best opportunities.

Propelled by rapid economic growth, the country has become the promised land for architects around the world. New landmarks are mushrooming in major cities, and many bear the signatures of foreign architects.

Besides Hemel's 2.95-billion-yuan ($460-million) Canton Tower, Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron helped design the Beijing National Stadium, or Bird's Nest, the centerpiece of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

American architect Steven Holl's Vanke Center in Guangdong's Shenzhen was completed in 2009, and Japanese architect Tadao Ando's latest creation, Shanghai's first lakeside theater, is set to finish construction in 2013.

"People in fast developing countries are open to state-of-the-art architectural designs," says Vincent Lam Siu-yu, project manager at Arub Group Limited, an engineering consulting firm that worked with Hemel during the Canton Tower project.

"Architects can give full play to their creativity here in China."

Hemel first went to Guangzhou on his honeymoon tour of Asia in 1995. Even then, he was already impressed with the city's vitality.

"Guangzhou is dynamic. It's constantly changing and reinventing itself," he says.

"Seeing construction springing up across the city made me believe that I could find plenty of opportunities here."

When he heard in 2004 that Guangzhou was launching an international search to design its landmark high-rise, Hemel immediately submitted his pitch.

Three years after its completion, the Canton Tower still plays an important role in Hemel's daily life. It's a solid testimony to his talents.