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.

The most important thing, in order to forge one's own creative personality, is to travel, to see different environments, different cultures. I wanted to try to imagine a new kind of structure in architecture. In general, architects follow fashions. They're neoclassical, postmodern.

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.

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

Architects mostly work for privileged people, people who have money and power. Power and money are invisible, so people hire us to visualize their power and money by making monumental architecture. I love to make monuments, too, but I thought perhaps we can use our experience and knowledge more for the general public, even for those who have lost their houses in natural disasters.

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.