Book excerpt: The work of Japanese architect Toyo Ito explores the dynamic relationship between buildings and their environments. His principal focus is on developing an architecture free of the grid system, which he believes homogenizes people and their lives. Toyo Ito: Forces of Nature documents the architect's 2009 Kassler lecture at the Princeton University School of Architecture. Told primarily in Ito's own voice, the book features the edited lecture transcript, as well as an interview with the architect by Julian Worrall and a new translation of Ito's 1980 essay "The Projection of the 'Profane' World onto the 'Sacred.'" Projects illustrated in the book include: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (unbuilt), Taichung Opera House, Tama Art University Library, and Kakamigahara Crematorium. Bringing together different strands of a long and fruitful career, Toyo Ito: Forces of Nature concludes with an afterword by Ito that addresses the exhibition Home for All, a response to Japan's earthquake and tsunami disasters in March 2011.