Tadao Ando

“Look at London or Paris: they're both filthy. You don't get that in Tokyo. The proud residents look after their city.”

“Without this spirit, Modernist architecture cannot fully exist. Since there is often a mismatch between the logic and the spirit of Modernism, I use architecture to reconcile the two.”

“I hope that America as a whole, and especially its architects, will become more seriously involved in producing a new architectural culture that would bring the nation to the apex - where it has stood before - and lead the world.”

“I believe that architecture is fundamentally a public space where people can gather and communicate, think about the history, think about the lives of human beings, or the world.”

“At the same time, I would add that the American people have a lot of courage.”

“I am interested in things happening around me, and I need to understand what's going on in other artistic sectors like music and literature.”

“People tend not to use this word beauty because it's not intellectual - but there has to be an overlap between beauty and intellect.”

“The computer offers another kind of creativity. You cannot ignore the creativity that computer technology can bring. But you need to be able to move between those two different worlds.”

“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.”

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

“Japanese traditional architecture is created based on these conditions. This is the reason you have a very high degree of connection between the outside and inside in architecture.”

“All those involved in the construction of an architectural design, from the architect to the builder, have an attachment to the architecture, although it's difficult to quantify the attachment.”

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

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

“When I design buildings, I think of the overall composition, much as the parts of a body would fit together. On top of that, I think about how people will approach the building and experience that space.”

“In Japan, there is less a culture of preserving old buildings than in Europe.”

“When I draw something, the brain and the hands work together.”

“Japanese architecture is traditionally based on wooden structures that need renovating on a regular basis.”

“I hope America can also be the cultural leader of the world, and use this frontier spirit to lead and show others that we need courage to go places where we have not gone before.”

“You cannot simply put something new into a place. You have to absorb what you see around you, what exists on the land, and then use that knowledge along with contemporary thinking to interpret what you see.”