If I want to make people moved or cry in a film, I figure out what the room looks like, what the people are wearing, what time of day it is, what the light is, how to photograph it, where to put the camera. It involves optics and costume design and set design and architecture.
What makes architecture extraordinary is that you're looking at the building, but your peripheral vision is also seeing how it fits within a space. And it's seeing more than one part of the building at one time.
I wanted a real profession. And I'd always been interested in architecture and in design and in, really, what makes things work. And understanding what's kind of behind the walls and why things stand up and some things don't.
I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture.
I would like my architecture to inspire people to use their own resources, to move into the future.
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.
The speed of change makes you wonder what will become of architecture.
When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature - this very unique to Japan.
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.
Italy is full of historical buildings. And Europe holds a great history of philosophy from Greece until today. I read all those books and see these buildings, and I think of where I stand when I design my 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.
Japanese architecture is traditionally based on wooden structures that need renovating on a regular basis.
Spiritual space is lost in gaining convenience. I saw the need to create a mixture of Japanese spiritual culture and modern western architecture.
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.
All architecture has a public nature, I believe, so I would like to make a public space.
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.
My guilty pleasure is I like to watch a lot of HGTV. I really like watching design shows about houses, like extreme homes. Like buying a bridge and turning it into a house or something like that. I really am interested in home design or something like that... architecture.
Little do we find any Phoenician architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy, to say nothing of the lands where art was native.
The loftier the building, the deeper must the foundation be laid.
When Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789, he was not much impressed by the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in the struggle for independence.
Charleston has something for everyone, rain or shine. Its architecture is unparalleled. Carriage rides are great for seeing the city and hearing the history behind certain houses and the area.
I have a strong sense that every project is an invention, which is not a word I hear being used in architecture courses.
To make architecture with any real value is a massive challenge.
Historically, in the world of architecture, enormous amounts of care and energy have been lavished on things that are almost a cliched idea of culture.
The rules of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
Architecture is involved with the world, but at the same time it has a certain autonomy. This autonomy cannot be explained in terms of traditional logic because the most interesting parts of the work are non-verbal. They operate within the terms of the work, like any art.
I'm often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That's impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more.
But I absolutely believe that architecture is a social activity that has to do with some sort of communication or places of interaction, and that to change the environment is to change behaviour.
The aesthetic of architecture has to be rooted in a broader idea about human activities like walking, relaxing and communicating. Architecture thinks about how these activities can be given added value.
You might say that when you step inside, you're entering a honorific space, but that's something totally different than experiencing it. And in architecture the experience comes first. That has the deepest effect on us.
Do I provoke as a method of investigation? Of course. That's the essence of architecture. Do I do it with gusto? I do.
In architecture, you arrive so late. I look at doctors, lawyers I know, and they're all buying boats and bailing out at 62. My career is just getting started.
I fought violently for the autonomy of architecture. It's a very passive, weak profession where people deliver a service. You want a blue door, you get a blue door. You want it to look neo-Spanish, you get neo-Spanish. Architecture with any authenticity represents resistance. Resistance is a good thing.
I don't know any architects that I respect who don't have their own voice. I think the difference between architecture and the other arts is your immersion in reality.
I believe that artistic activities change people. You do effect change. I see architecture as a political, social and cultural act - that is its primary role.
I think all good architecture should challenge you, make you start asking questions. You don't have to understand it. You may not like it. That's OK.
I have a preference for rough architecture, real, inexpensive, unfinished.
Architecture is a result of a process of asking questions and testing them and re-interrogating and changing in a repetitive way.
I've always been interested in an architecture of resistance - architecture that has some power over the way we live. Working under adversarial conditions could be seen as a plus because you're offering alternatives. Still, there are situations that make you ask the questions: 'Do I want to be a part of this?'
Architecture is the beginning of something because it's - if you're not involved in first principles, if you're not involved in the absolute, the beginning of that generative process, it's cake decoration.
Somehow, architecture alters the way we think about the world and the way we behave. Any serious architecture, as a litmus test, has to be that.
Architecture is the story of how we see ourselves. It is the architect's job to service everyday life.
When people are deprived of a sense, their other senses get heightened. If you're culturally devoid of something - of weather, of artistry, of interesting architecture, all the way down the line to culture itself - you're either forced to give in and get that car dealership, or you manufacture those things for yourself.
I don't know why I've always been so captivated by architecture.
When I left the work world, I started designing my dream house. I dived into architecture and bought seven vacant lots. My plan was to build one house, move in, and build the next. If the next was better, I'd move in and sell the previous one - so on and so forth.
I studied Russian history at school, and I absolutely loved St Petersburg. It was magnificent - the architecture is incredible and has quite a significant Dutch influence.
What's fascinating about D.C., the exteriors are these elaborate structures, this gorgeous architecture and beautiful stonework, and then you go inside and it's crap-looking - apart from the White House, which is beautiful.
We think of enterprise architecture as the process we use for fully describing and mapping business functionality and business requirements and relating them to information systems requirements.
The thing people forget is that the entire world - or, at least, Europe, U.S., transatlantic, Russia, Soviet Union - that security architecture has been in place since 1945 and has been refined. Already, the U.N. charter that everyone signed is that you can't change borders through use of force or even threat of use of force.
I would like to use architecture to create bonds between people who live in cities, and even use it to recover the communities that used to exist in every single city.