People are not killed by earthquakes alone, but by collapsed buildings.

Architecture is not about designing somehting from a free, fanciful idea. It is about discovering and establishing one's own principle, some kind of regularity - finding an individual formula to apply to one's buildings.

Everyone used to want to be star architects. That's no longer the case.

I travel a lot. Japanese culture is very ancient and very strong. That's why most people who commission work from Japanese architects expect them to create works that have an element of exoticism, the kind typical of Japanese culture. I don't do that.

I believe that the material doesn’t need to be strong to be used to build a strong structure. The strength of the structure has nothing to do with the strength of the material.

I'm not inventing anything new, I'm just using existing material differently.

An architect does not need to spend his whole career making monuments for rich people.