After World War II great strides were made in modern Japanese architecture not only in advanced technology allowing earthquake resistant tall buildings but expressing and infusing characteristics of traditional Japanese architecture in modern buildings.

In my experience if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg it's modern architecture.

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.

Yet for my part deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church.

Until the Eighties Oslo was a rather boring town but it's changed a lot and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water's edge.

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

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.

Post-Modernism was a reaction against Modernism. It came quite early to music and literature and a little later to architecture. And I think it's still coming to computer science.

I could have been an architect but I don't think I'd have been very happy. Nearly all modern architecture is a silly game as far as I can see.

Rome has not seen a modern building in more than half a century. It is a city frozen in time.