[4] Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Raymond Moriyama suffered burns across his back and all over his arm as a four-year-old and was sometimes teased about his scars.

During the eight months he spent bedridden after the accident, he saw an architect coming and going from a nearby construction site "with a blueprint under his arm and a pipe in his mouth."

Moriyama was then twelve; his mother, who was pregnant at the time, was left with him and his two sisters to run the family hardware store.

Shortly after, Moriyama and his family were forced out of Vancouver and confined to an internment camp in the Slocan Valley of British Columbia during World War II.

[5] Japanese Canadians on the West Coast were classified as security threats, in a policy similar to that of the United States.

Moriyama describes his experience of finding escape as such:[7]In despair, I decided to bathe in the Slocan River on the other side of a little mountain away from the camp.

After the war, his family reunited with his father and they resettled in Hamilton, Ontario, where he attended Westdale Secondary School and worked in a pottery factory.

Ambidextrous, Moriyama was able to finish his piecework quickly, and his bosses allowed him to use his extra time to study for school.

[8] Moriyama's first large project as an independent architect was the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, with design starting in 1964, the building being finished in 1969.

[11] In 2012 he created a $200,000 endowment with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada called the Moriyama RAIC International Prize.

He also created a $200,000 endowment with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada called the Moriyama RAIC International Prize.

Built in 1991, the prominent concept of this building is the "tree house", inspired by Moriyama childhood years spent in Japanese internment camps.

His intention was to enable a place of social connection and welcoming for all those visiting the Embassy:[7] Moriyama replicated the feeling of youthfulness and magic of the treehouse he first built while in camp.

[1] On the lower half, a large solid mass of concrete includes deep set windows, and above it, an asymmetrical glass peaked roof creates a light, sculptural contrast.