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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.