Fujimori basically fell into designing buildings after his native village commissioned him to design a small history museum for a local family with ancient ties to the area. As he pondered what form the building should take, he felt the weight of all of architectural history bearing down on him. “Since I was a famous architectural historian,” he says, “I thought my architecture should be totally unique, dissimilar to any architecture that came before. I figured that if I did something traditionally European or Japanese, everyone would say ‘Oh, it’s because he’s a historian.’ I didn’t want that criticism.” But at the same time, he wanted to stay away from anything too contemporary. “Some of my closest friends, like Tadao Ando and Toyo Ito, were architects who were starting to get famous, and I didn’t want them to laugh at me and say, ‘Oh, you mimic my work.’” (Dwell)

Terunobu Fujimori

This guy though. This guy needs to design every building, ever.