Tadao Ando

is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field.

He works primarily in exposed cast-in-place concrete and is renowned for an exemplary craftsmanship which invokes a Japanese sense of materiality, junction and spatial narrative through the pared aesthetics of international modernism.

In 1969, he established the firm Tadao Ando Architects & Associates. In 1995, Ando won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the highest distinction in the field of architecture.Ando 1995, Prtizker Prize web page. He donated the $100,000 prize money to the orphans of the 1995 Kobe earthquake.Muschamp, Herbert. (1995). "Among the Fountains with Tadao Ando; Concrete Dreams In the Sun King's Court," New York Times. September 21, 1995.

Buildings and works

Tadao Ando's body of work is known for the creative use of natural light and for architectures that follow the natural forms of the landscape (rather than disturbing the landscape by making it conform to the constructed space of a building). The architect's buildings are often characterized by complex three-dimensional circulation paths. These paths interweave between interior and exterior spaces formed both inside large-scale geometric shapes and in the spaces between them.

His "Row House in Sumiyoshi" (Azuma House, 住吉の長屋), a small two-story, cast-in-place concrete house completed in 1976, is an early work that begins to show elements of his characteristic style. It consists of three equally sized rectangular volumes: two enclosed volumes of interior spaces separated by an open courtyard. By nature of the courtyard's position between the two interior volumes, it becomes an integral part of the house's circulation system.

Ando's housing complex at Rokko, just outside Kobe, is a complex warren of terraces and balconies and atriums and shafts. The designs for Rokko Housing One (1983) and for Rokko Housing Two (1993) illustrate a range of issues in the traditional architectural vocabulary—the interplay of solid and void, the alternatives of open and closed, the contrasts of light and darkness. More significantly, Ando's noteworthy achievement in these clustered buildings is site specific—the structures survived undamaged after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995.Goldberger, Paul. "Architecture View: 'Laureate' in a Land of Zen and Microchips," The New York Times. April 23, 1995. New York Times architectural critic Paul Goldberger argues convincingly that "Ando is right in the Japanese tradition: spareness has always been a part of Japanese architecture, at least since the 16th century; [and] it is not for nothing that Frank Lloyd Wright more freely admitted to the influences of Japanese architecture than of anything American." Like Ando, Wright's site specific decision-making anticipated seismic activity; and like Ando's several Hyōgo-Awaji buildings, Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo did survive the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.Bassin, Joan. "Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel", National Building Museum exhibition.

Completed projects gallery, selected

Completed projects list

Projects in progress

Awards

References

Literature

• Francesco Dal Co. Tadao Ando: Complete Works. Phaidon Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7148-3717-2
• Kenneth Frampton. Tadao Ando: Buildings, Projects, Writings. Rizzoli International Publications, 1984. ISBN 0-8478-0547-6
• Randall J. Van Vynckt. International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture. St. James Press, 1993. ISBN 1-55862-087-7

External links

• Tadao Ando official website
• Tadao Ando unofficial website created and maintained by fans
• Tadao Ando page at greatbuildingsonline.com
• Architectural Record Magazine | Interviews | Tadao Ando
• Tadao Ando unofficial website(cyber-squatting)
• Tadao Ando page at greatbuildings.com
• Tadao Japanese Pavillion in 1992 Expo

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Categories: Great Buildings Architects | Architects | Pritzker Prize | Praemium Imperiale | Alvar Aalto Medal Recipients | AIA Gold Medal Award Recipients