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 …

- Shigeru Ban

I'm not inventing anything new, I'm just using existing material differently.

- Shigeru Ban

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

- Shigeru Ban

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 th…

- Shigeru Ban

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 peo…

- Shigeru Ban

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 ca…

- Shigeru Ban

Everyone used to want to be star architects. That's no longer the case.

- Shigeru Ban

Architects mostly work for privileged people, people who have money and power. Power and money are invisible, so people hire us to visualize their po…

- Shigeru Ban

Architecture is not about designing somehting from a free, fanciful idea. It is about discovering and establishing one's own principle, some kind of …

- Shigeru Ban