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

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 did a lot of tests, and I finalized my research. Paper has become a part of my visual vocabulary. You know, paper is an industrial material. You can do almost anything with it. Wood, for example, is much more difficult to adapt to different needs.

For me, there's no difference between what's temporary and what's definitive. I built the church in Kobe, which was supposed to be temporary, and people liked it so much that there's a version of it still there today - unlike some concrete buildings that were just built for money and that can be destroyed from one day to the next. Concrete can be very fragile during earthquakes.

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