Quotes by Tadao Ando

"My hand is the extension of the thinking process - the creative process."

"There is a role and function for beauty in our time."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Spiritual space is lost in gaining convenience. I saw the need to create a mixture of Japanese spiritual culture and modern western architecture."

"All architecture has a public nature, I believe, so I would like to make a public space."

"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."