If there is only one culture all over the world, that's not a good thing.

In Italy, there are so many significant architectural structures in history such as the Pantheon in Rome, or the Duomo.

You can't really say what is beautiful about a place, but the image of the place will remain vividly with you.

I like ruins because what remains is not the total design, but the clarity of thought, the naked structure, the spirit of the thing.

If I can create some space that people haven't experienced before and if it stays with them or gives them a dream for the future, that's the kind of structure I seek to create.

I would like my architecture to inspire people to use their own resources, to move into the future.

Since I am a Japanese man who's been building through the experience of Japanese architecture, my actual designs come from Japanese architectural concepts, although they're based on Western methods and materials.