Tadao Ando
Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate
1995
Proceedings At Award Ceremony
At Versailles
Jay A. Pritzker
President, The Hyatt Foundation
Tadao Ando is that rare architect who combines artistic and
intellectual sensitivity in a single individual capable of producing buildings, large and
small, that both serve and inspire. His powerful inner vision, ignores whatever movements,
schools or styles that might be current, creating buildings with form and composition
related to the kind of life that will be lived there.
At an age when most architects are beginning to do their first serious
works, Ando has accomplished an extraordinary body of work, primarily in his native Japan,
that already sets him apart. Working with smooth-as-silk concrete, Ando creates spaces
using walls which he defines as the most basic element of architecture, but also the most
enriching. In spite of his consistent use of materials and the elements of pillar, wall,
and vault, his different combinations of these elements always prove exciting and dynamic.
His design concepts and materials have linked international Modernism to the Japanese
tradition of aesthetics. His dedication and understanding of the importance of
craftsmanship have earned him the appellation of builder as well as architect.
He is accomplishing his self-imposed mission to restore the unity
between house and nature. Using the most basic geometric forms, he creates microcosms for
the individual with ever changing patterns of light. But far more than achieving some
abstract design concept, his architecture is a reflection of a fundamental process of
building something for habitation.
Ando's architecture is an assemblage of artistically composed
surprises in space and form. There is never a predictable moment as one moves through his
buildings. He refuses to be bound by convention. Originality is his medium and his
personal view of the world is his source of inspiration.
The Pritzker Architecture Prize honors Tadao Ando not only for works
completed, but also for future projects that when realized, will most certainly further
enrich the art of architecture.
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by
Kenneth Frampton
Ware Professor of Architecture,
The Graduate School of
Architecture Planning and Preservation
Columbia University, New York
After an informal apprenticeship to a Japanese carpenter and a number
of independent study tours in Asia, Europe and the Americas, Tadao Ando first came to
public notice with his diminutive Azuma house realized in Sumiyoshi in 1976 for which he
received the Japanese Architectural Association prize for architecture. This two story
dwelling, conceived as a megaron inserted within a row of traditional terrace houses,
already established the essential principles of Ando's architecture; his basic concept of
creating introspective microcosms to stand against the urban chaos of the late modern
world. This was a strategy as he put it, of "using walls to defeat walls."1
Thereafter this approach manifested itself in a series of reinforced concrete houses each
of which was focused in one way or another about an atrium, in particular his Matsumoto
and Ishihara houses of the late seventies built in the suburbs of Osaka. Where the first
of these focused about a terrace, opening onto a forest reserve, the second was a
windowless, reinforced concrete dwelling planned around three sides of a top-lit court. A
number of features in this small three story house established Ando's basic syntax,
comprising in the first instance his habitual use of fair-faced in-situ concrete, inside
and out, either as a bounding wall or as a free-standing frame, combined with large areas
of plate glass or glass block, framed in steel and painted grey.
Evidently influenced to an equal degree by Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier
Ando evoked the Japanese tradition through subtle associations as one may judge from the
way in which the proportions of the shoji screens in the Ishihara tatami room in the house
were echoed by the steel framed, plate glass windows opening on to the atrium, not to
mention the affinity obtaining between the shoji and the glass block in-fill above.
Where his houses were situated in the midst of nature as in the two
story Koshino House built in the pine woods of Ashiya above Kobe in 1981, Ando arranged
for the atrium to flow out into the surrounding landscape. This gesture was given a
cross-cultural inflection, through a broad flight of stairs, linking the atrium to the
entry and the garden, situated on either side of a narrow, steeply sloping site. This
feature, combined with vertical slot windows in the flanking concrete walls, was seemingly
derived from the architecture of Luis Barragan, as was the use of zenithal light in the
living room. This canonical house was further enriched by other transcultural gestures,
such as the built-in dining table that by virtue of a change in floor level permitted one
to adopt an oriental or occidental sitting posture at the same table. Of more decisively
Japanese provenance however was the exposed skeleton frame of the bedroom wing. This flat
roof was capped by a steel rail in such a way as to suggest a traditional dry garden, just
as the dimly lit corridors within, evoked the traditional dark interiors, evinced by Jun
'ichiro Tanizaki's in his seminal book, In Praise of Shadows of 1933.2
Notwithstanding his focus upon nature as the essential counterform to
his architecture, Ando's concept of the natural has always been oriented towards an
ineffable manifestation, bordering on the animistic. Of this he wrote in 1982:
"Such things as light and wind only have meaning when they are
introduced inside a house in a form cut off from the outside world. The isolated fragments
of light and air suggest the entire natural world. The forms I have created have altered
and acquired meaning through elementary nature (light and air) that give indications of
the passage of time and the changing of the seasons,..."3
The range and scale of Ando's architecture began to expand in the
mid-eighties with two relatively large urban works; his Rokko Housing built on a
previously unbuildable hillside site overlooking Kobe Harbor and an eight story commercial
complex, known as the Festival, completed in downtown Naha, Okinawa in 1984. While the
first of these works clearly derived from Le Corbusier's Roq et Rob terrace housing of
1949, the second was rendered as an introspective seven story cube protected by perforated
screen walls from the chaotic metropolis surrounding it on every side. Within this seven
by seven bay concrete skeleton Ando stacked a number of open-planned, commercial floors,
fed by a narrow light-court housing the necessary vertical circulation, stairs,
escalators, etc. As in all of Ando's buildings everything depended on the way in which
light and air were filtered through the enclosing membrane; light entering in this
instance through a continuously perforated skin, thereby creating a changing chiarascuro
within the interior of the structure.
Between 1985 and 1988 Ando realized four buildings that established
him definitively as a public architect of world stature; three of these structures were
ecclesiastical — the so called Rokko Chapel and the churches of the Light and the
Water, while the fourth, the Children's Museum in Hyogo, was rendered, together with its
spectacular site, as a generic monument. Of the utmost simplicity each of these buildings
posited a different theme by treating light, water, wind and topography in a different
way.
While the first in the series, the Rokko Chapel, transformed the
type-form of an early Christian basilica by the addition of a glazed loggia, that subtly
reinterpreted the traditional torii approach to a Japanese shrine, the second a
wedding chapel, was a minimalist reworking of Kaja and Heikki Siren's Otaniemi church of
1968. However, unlike this minimalist Nordic essay in brick and timber, the
Church-on-the-Water was able to engender images of symbolic power through extremely simple
means; above all through an ambiguous three-dimensional use of the cross motif clustered
about the four sides of a glazed belvedere so as to suggest the four quarters of an
archaic world. Ando set this iconic construction together with the chapel against an
expanse of water slowly descending through a set of shallow weips across a carefully
contoured landfall. Ando would adopt the same device in his Children's Museum, wherein
sheets of shallow water cascade down the side of the museum, towards the broad panorama of
a reservoir backed by mountains. This last, serving as borrowed scenery in the Shakkei
tradition, became part of the overall waterscape. The grandeur of this aquatic vista was
matched by a promenade architecturale articulating an undulating verdant site with
a cranked causeway linking the museum to a metaphysical meditation place and a distant
crafts center. Here the allusion was as much indebted to archaic Crete as to the Shinto
sites of Japan.
Finally at the other end of the scale entirely, the Chapel of the
Light at Ibaraki was an exemplary exercise in modesty and discretion. Comprising a simple
basilica this diminutive concrete prism was deftly added to an existing religious
compound. One single gesture namely an incision in the shape of a cross, spanning the
entire plane of the altar wall, converted the symbolic cruciform into an abstract icon of
unparalleled intensity by virtue of the fact that the aperture introduced a constantly
changing play of light into the interior.
When one looks back over the last twenty years of Ando's prolific
practice — some sixty works realized in less than two decades — it becomes clear
that his architecture is nothing less than a critically poetic, yet realistic stand
against the technological nihilism of the epoch. Like Auguste Perret before him, but in a
totally different spirit, Ando has adopted concrete as though it were the tectonic
demiurge of our time. With very few exceptions he has treated it as the one substance from
which everything must be made; in order to guarantee the ontological presence of his work.
It is this, plus the geometrical counterpoint of the volume that assures the
phenomenological existentia of the subject within his architecture; the sensual
self-awareness of the body-being of which he has written:
"The body articulates the world. At the same time, the body is
articulated by the world. When "I" perceive the concrete to be something cold
and hard, "I" recognize the body as something warm and soft. In this way the
body in its dynamic relationship with the world becomes the Shintai. It is only the
Shintai in this sense that builds or understands architecture. The Shintai
is a sentient being that responds to the world."4
For all its seemingly universality the particular character of Ando's
concrete depends not only on the spacing of the reinforcement and the extreme care with
which it is laid and vibrated but also on the precision of the timber formwork from which
it is cast. This, in turn, derives from the Japanese carpentry tradition in which Ando was
partially trained and in which he is still steeped, as we may judge from the sublime
structure of the all-timber Japanese pavilion that he realized for the Seville World
Exhibition of 1992. It is just this tectonic probity plus the poetic strength of his
topographic vision that puts Ando's work into a class apart. This landscapist aspect has
never been more clearly demonstrated than in his recent Chikatsu-Asuka Tumuli Museum built
in the southern part of the Osaka prefecture.
Ando is at once both an unequivocally modern architect and a figure
whose values lie embedded in some archaic moment; in a world that while it is divested of
every nostalgia, lies nonetheless committed to some other time before the machinations of
progress had turned into an ever present nemesis. Like Brancusi he aspires to a
transcendent modernity, to a dematerialization under light, to a concrete that paralleling
Brancusi's polished steel, turns momentarily into silk. It is a sense of luxus that
resists all spectacular apparatus of techno-scientific display, in order to testify to a
moment that lies outside the constant threat of commodification.
Footnotes:
1Tadao Ando, "The Wall as Territorial
Delineation," The Japan Architect, June 1978, pp 12 & 13.
2Jinichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows translated
by Thomas J. Harper & Edward G. Sidensticker, Leete's Island Books, New Haven, CT
1977.
3Tadao Ando, "From Self Enclosed Modern Architecture
Towards Universality," The Japan Architect, May 1992, p 9.
4Tadao Ando, "Shintai and Space," Precis 7.
The Journal of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and
Preservation, Rizzoli 1986, sec. 16.
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Speeches as follows:
Mr. Chairman of the Pritzker Prize, Madame L'Ambassador, ladies,
gentlemen, Mr. Minister of Culture, my dear colleague, Philippe Douste-Blazy: A year
ago or so, we were in Columbus, Indiana, to award Christian de Portzamparc with the
Pritzker Prize 1994. I had then indicated then to the organizers that I would do
everything necessary so that they could organize the award ceremony in Paris in 1995,
under the best circumstances and, as usual, in one of the most prestigious and beautiful
places available. And with the help of the organizers, and thanks to the special
authorization that was given us by the President of the Republic — who is the sole
authority over the Trianon Palace in Versailles — we are now able to meet here. I am
particularly happy to have been able to help organize the Pritzker Prize awarding ceremony
in one of the masterpieces of architecture in France, and one of the most well-known,
well-appreciated and visited sites worldwide. I would like also to say that I'm
particularly happy that, in France, at the Trianon of Versailles, the prize should be
handed to Tadao Ando. For a long time, I have had a great deal of admiration for Tadao,
whom I met a few years ago. The exhibit of his work at Pompidou Center had been for the
French public at large a wonderful, admirable revelation.
He is the architect who has been able to marry building environment
and nature better than anyone. He, by himself, is already a masterpiece, at least such as
it is conceived of in Japan. He is so sensitive. He's so discreet. He's so talented. So,
I'm particularly happy that, thanks to Christian de Portzamparc who was awarded the
Pritzker Prize last year, Tadao Ando is given the chance to receive the prize here, in
Versailles in France.
On behalf of my government, and my colleague, Phillipe Douste-Blazy
— who is in charge of the Ministry of Culture now — for all French architects,
it's a major pleasure, a great, great honor to welcome you here tonight.
As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Pritzker, I must tell you this
personally: There was a debt from me to you for everything you have done for the past
twenty years in favor of architecture. We're very, very happy to welcome you here today.
It is a great pleasure, indeed, and I hope it will be a major memory, as far as you're
concerned. I'm giving the floor now, to Phillipe Douste-Blazy, the new Minister of Culture
in the present French Government.
Mr. Minister, dear Jacques Toubon, Madame the Ambassador, ladies,
gentlemen, there are places where spirit flows. Versailles represents one of the summits
of French art, of Western art, and of universal art. But what is the spirit presiding over
the awarding within these walls, to an architect from Japan, of the prestigious prize
founded by an American? Well, it is the spirit of architecture, none the less.
Here in Versailles we are reminded that the Egyptian tradition,
Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome made architecture the major mode of expression for any
civilization.
Gods, kings, and people, were served by the other arts, architecture
is, rightly, identified to the memory of these masters: Ramses, Pericles, and here, Louis
XIV. They would be little remembered outside the buildings that their wonderful genius
favored or, perhaps, imposed on their people.
No surprise, therefore, that the classic tradition of architecture was
the first of the fine arts. An art so deeply embodied, so ready to become the very
expression — and, if I may say so — the symbol of a nation. This art is also,
paradoxically, one of the most international ones. The dissemination of models, the
dissemination of treaties, the mobility of architects from Roman times right through
Classic times consecrated the privilege of talent over nationality, over birth.
Architecture has always been a classic art in the sense of a universal art and, because of
this tradition of universalism in France, it is the major French art.
Architecture deals with the organization of space and spaces. France
has launched the building of major works such as the Pompidou Center by Renzo Piano and
Richard Rogers; the Grande Arche de la Defense by Paul Andreu and J. C. von Spekelsen, and
the buildings designed by Christian de Portzamparc.
But architecture also deals with a space which has already been
fashioned by the past centuries. Even in our existing framework, we must find some sign of
continuity. There are grandiose gestures. But there are also more sensitive, more subtle
works of art where there is a manifest and discreet sense of humility. This humility and
modesty are the quintessence of classic art. And I think we can say that Tadao Ando makes
this his characteristic. I would like to say, on my own behalf, after Jacques Toubon, how
much I admire him. I know that he started designing very simple row houses. Then he worked
on temples. He worked on shrines. And he has also been remarkable in the creation of
places of culture. The Pritzker Prize, a really noble prize of architecture, recognizes a
witness of his times.
And, to finish, ladies and gentlemen, I want to say that I see a sign
and a promise in the fact that most of his works are religious, artistic, and cultural
places where the spirit flows. As Minister of Culture, I am particularly satisfied that
this is the case. Thank you for your attention.
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J. Carter BROWN
Chairman of the Jury
Pritzker Architecture Prize
Mr. Toubon, Minister of Justice, Mr. Minister of Culture, Madame
Ambassador, Mr. Prefect, ladies and gentlemen. [in French] I thought I was going to say a
few words in French but, I know all too well, alas, that my French is not up to the
standard of this particular place. And, therefore, thanks to the wonderful work of
technology, I can now carry on in my native tongue of English without fear and, perhaps,
without any reproach—sans peur et sans reproche.
[in English] As Chairman of the Jury of the Pritzker Prize, I cannot
express in any language how delighted we are to be here with so many of our former
Pritzker winners in attendance, and how enormously grateful we are to the French Republic
for the great privilege of being in this exalted spot. President De Gaulle, you remember,
caused this wonderful place to be restored so that he could receive visiting heads of
state here. And I wanted, on a personal level, to say how grateful all of us are to
Jacques Toubon and to be able to greet on his first night out on a weekday evening, in his
new job, the new Minister of Culture.
I'm also somewhat experienced in some of the technical aspects of
running a museum, except that the fountains that I.M. Pei gave us next to those glass
tetrahedrons in Washington did not have to rely on Seventeenth-Century plumbing. And we
are very privileged that we will be able to see some of the fountains actually run which
were, in fact, designed only to run as the King passed. Tonight, we are all kings. The
Trustees of the National Gallery were here in Versailles just last year, and I know that
my colleague, the Director, Monsieur Babelon, and all those responsible, are to be
thanked. I wanted also to tip my cap to Le Vicomte de Rohan, who is President of the Amis
de Versailles, for all his friendship and help. And, to an old friend — actually from
the music world — Nicole Salinger for everything.
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JAY A. PRITZKER
President, The Hyatt Foundation
Monsieur Le Ministers, Madame L'Ambassador, Ladies and Gentlemen. I
will not make it difficult for the interpreter by attempting to fracture French.
There are many definitions of architecture, but one of America's
outstanding writers on architecture Vincent Scully, defined it as: "The continuing
dialogue between generations which creates an environment across time." I think that
applies to architecture and to all the arts. And it's not just from generation to
generation, but from culture to culture, and country to country. A continuous
cross-fertilization, often traveling full circle over the centuries.
Just as the great Impressionist painters — late in the last
century and early in this one — were influenced by the wood block artists of Japan,
American architects at the turn of the century, were influenced by the Beaux Arts school
here in France. They then absorbed other influences, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, who
acknowledged Japan as one of his sources of inspiration. Our Laureate tonight, closes the
circle, by acknowledging Wright as an influence on his work. The French master architect,
Le Corbusier, has been cited by virtually every Laureate since the prize was established.
It's been said that Corbusier did for concrete, what Michelangelo did for marble. Tadao
Ando not only acknowledges Le Corbusier, but takes the process one step further, by making
his concrete "smooth as silk" on his structures.
The late Lord Clark was one of the founding jurors of this prize. He
spoke of how architecture can conjure an image of history in our imagination, using as an
example the Egyptian pyramids. Variations on that theme are appearing thousands of years
later, not only in the Louvre, but in a number of cities in the United States, as
convention and entertainment centers.
In some cases, imitation or duplication is nearly impossible. Such is
the case here in Versailles. Costs would be prohibitive, and the artisans don't exist who
would have the capacity to do it. Baroque was carried forward to new heights here. It
evolved into Rococo. All of Europe found Versailles an example to emulate. I understand
that King Louis XIV dabbled in architecture, and that he originated the idea for the
peristyle where we had our reception earlier this evening. We offer our gratitude not only
to French Royalty for this structure, but to the French Republic for making it possible to
present the prize here in the Grand Trianon this evening.
It's particularly appropriate since America has had longstanding ties
to France since 1777 when Benjamin Franklin was our first Minister, right here in
Versailles. In fact, this was the first diplomatic mission established by the just-born
United States.
As we move our ceremony from city to city each year, paying homage to
architects of other times and honoring current architects, there's never really been a
relationship with such significance as this one. A few years ago, we were at Todai-Ji in
Nara, Japan, where we honored an American architect. Last year, Christian de Portzamparc
received the Prize in Columbus, Indiana, a small community famed for its architectural
patronage, in the middle of America.
Tonight we've come full circle again, presenting the Prize to Tadao
Ando, a Japanese architect who's a rare combination of artistic and intellectual
sensitivity; who produces buildings that both serve and inspire. He confesses to being
self-taught, having spent many hours studying books about architecture, visiting
structures around the world, to learn by example, listening to those dialogues between
generations and cultures.
As the Pritzker jury said in its citation, and I quote: "Ando's
architecture is an assemblage of artistically composed surprises in space and form.
There's never a predictable moment as one moves through his buildings. He refuses to be
bound by convention. Originality is his medium. And his personal view of the world is his
source of inspiration."
Ando-san, would you join me here on the platform? I want to present
you with this medal. We wish you well. We congratulate you.
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Thank you very much. Thank you. For the past thirty years, I've been
engaged in architectural work, and I'm not at all a good speaker. And I feel very sorry
that it's so inconvenient for you to put on your headphones because of my linguistic
incapability. In 1965, I came to France to see the architecture of Le Corbusier utilizing
the Siberian train, and the first place I visited in France was Versailles. And at that
time, I never thought that I would be awarded, here in this chateau.
Today I am overwhelmed by receiving the Pritzker Prize. From deep in
my heart, I would like to thank every member of the jury as well as the people of the
Hyatt Foundation who established and administer the prize.
I believe that there are two separate dimensions coexisting in
architecture. One is substantive and concerns function, security and economy, inasmuch as
architecture accomodates human living, it cannot ignore these elements of the real.
However, can architecture be architecture with this alone? Since architecture is a form of
human expression, when it steps out of the exigenices of sheer construction toward the
realm of aesthetics, the question of architecture as art arises. It is at this point that
the other dimension, imagination, comes into play.
When the Hanshin Earthquake struck recently, causing such extreme
disaster, too many buildings and houses collapsed, and more than 5000 people lost their
lives. Although more than thirty of my building projects throughout that region were
spared, this disaster is emphatically not someone else's problem. For me, a person born,
raised, and now practicing in the Hanshin area, it is my sincere desire that after this
earthquake, and in acknowledgment of Japan's precarious geographical situation in general,
people will consider the security of architecture, specifically earthquake engineering and
contingency planning, muchmore seriously than before. Originally architecture offered the
most fundamental shelter from the elements. Then, that architectural theoretician of
ancient Rome, Vitruvius, proposed three indispensable principles of
architecture—utilitas, venustas, firmitas: utilitas is function (commodity) and
firmitas is strength (firmness), both are measures of architectonic potential, while
venustas (delight or beauty) resides in the dimension of imagination. (It is significant
that these three principles are inscribed on the Pritzker Architecture Prize medallion.)
The modern architecture that I have been weaned on also espouses
(clear) function, (exposed) structure, and (raw) material as principles —
characteristics that tend to be accessed only from realistic or substantive dimensions.
Fictionality or imagination, the other dimension, is omitted entirely. However, Vitruvius
emphasized venustas, in other words attraction or beauty as a necessity along with
strength and function. That is to say that he too, posed the fictional dimension of
imagination combined with the realistic dimension as that synthesis which deeply effects
human spirituality. Since the genesis of architecture, its fate has been that it connot be
constituted by functionality alone.
For me, making architecture is the same as thinking. For more than
thirty years, I have been making architecture by going back and forth between ideals and
reality, between the fictive and the substantive. My hope has been and continues to be,
not only to solve realistic problems, but also to pursue the ideal by overlaying
speculative imaginings. Furthermore, instead of allowing the ideal to remain simply as the
ideal, my goal is to go beyond every obstacle and challenge, and realize a substantive
architecture. That is to say that I have been trying to achieve a fictionality on the
premise of constructing a space that humans actually use. Therefore, when I say
fictionality of architecture, it does not mean simply a story or superficial decoration.
It means the quality of a spatial experience composed of architectonic elements aimed at
aesthetic perfection. What I have sought to achieve is a spatiality that stimulates the
human spirit, awakens the sensitivity and communicates with the deeper soul. In order to
construct the fictionality of architecture, one has to mobilize both reason and intuition
together, seeking a space that is a new discover for oneself. This space must contain the
notion of time as production of the new epoch, and simultaneously introduce specific
regionality, historicity, geography and tradition. It is my pleasure as an architect to
continue to think, to build, by engaging my full body to combine fiction and the actual
into a space of a higher dimension.
Architecture is deemed complete only upon the intervention of the
human that experiences it. In other words, architectural space becomes alive only in
correspondence with the human presence that perceives it in our contemporary culture,
where all of us are subjected to intense exterior stimulation, especially by the
electronic environment, the role of architectural space as a spiritual shelter is crucial.
Here again,what is of primary importance are the imagination and fictionality that
architecture contains beyond the substantive. Without stepping into the ambiguous realm of
the human spirit — happiness, affection, tranquility, tension — architecture
cannot achieve its fictionality. This is truly architecture's proper realm, but it is also
one that is impossible to formulate. Only after speculating the worlds of both the actual
and the fictional together can architecture come into existence as an expression, and rise
into the realm of art.
More than 500 children under the age of 18 lost a parent in the
Hanshin Earthquake; 88 of them lost both parents and became orphans. I have proposed the
establishment of a foundation in order to support the education of these children so that
they can sustain their hopes for the future. To that end, I would like to contribute the
hundred thousand dollar prize awarded to me today by The Hyatt Foundation towards this new
foundation for these young earthquake victims. I hope that for the next ten years at
least, with the help of five thousand colleagues and sympathizers to whom I will appeal,
we can continue to support these children economically so that they can pursue their
dreams. And I would like to continue to pursue my dreams as well, instilling these three
elements: function, beauty, and strength in my architecture. Thank you very much.
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