Tadao Ando
Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate
1995
..about
Tadao Ando
Tadao Ando of Osaka, Japan is a man who is at the pinnacle of
success in his own country. In the last few years, he has emerged as a cultural force in
the world as well. In 1995, the Pritzker Architecture
Prize was formally presented to him within the walls of the Grand Trianon Palace at
Versailles, France. There is little doubt that anyone in the world of architecture will
not be aware of his work. That work, primarily in reinforced concrete, defines spaces in
unique new ways that allow constantly changing patterns of light and wind in all his
structures, from homes and apartment complexes to places of worship, public museums and
commercial shopping centers.
"In all my works, light is an important controlling
factor," says Ando. "I create enclosed spaces mainly by means of thick concrete
walls. The primary reason is to create a place for the individual, a zone for oneself
within society. When the external factors of a city's environment require the wall to be
without openings, the interior must be especially full and satisfying."
And further on the subject of walls, Ando writes, "At times
walls manifest a power that borders on the violent. They have the power to divide space,
transfigure place, and create new domains. Walls are the most basic elements of
architecture, but they can also be the most enriching."
Raika Headquaters Building, interior,
Osaka, Japan
Ando continues, "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.
I create architectural order on the basis of geometry squares, circles, triangles and
rectangles. I try to use forces in the area where I am building, to restore the unity
between house and nature (light and wind) that was lost in the process of modernizing
Japanese houses during the rapid growth of the fifties and sixties."
John Morris Dixon of Progressive Architecture wrote in
1990: "The geometry of Ando's interior plans, typically involving rectangular systems
cut through by curved or angled walls, can look at first glance rather arbitrary and
abstract. What one finds in the actual buildings are spaces carefully adjusted to human
occupancy." Further, he describes Ando's work as reductivist, but "...the effect
is not to deprive us of sensory richness. Far from it. All of his restraint seems aimed at
focusing our attention on the relationships of his ample volumes, the play of light on his
walls, and the processional sequences he develops."
In his childhood, he spent his time mostly in the fields and
streets. From ages 10 to 17, he also spent time making wood models of ships, airplanes,
and moulds, learning the craft from a carpenter whose shop was across the street from his
home. After a brief stint at being a boxer, Ando began his self-education by apprenticing
to several relevant persons such as designers and city planners for short periods. "I
was never a good student. I always preferred learning things on my own outside of class.
When I was about 18, I started to visit temples, shrines, and tea houses in Kyoto and
Nara, there's a lot of great traditional architecture in the area. I was studying
architecture by going to see actual buildings, and reading books about them. " He
made study trips to Europe and the United States in the sixties to view and analyze great
buildings of western civilization, keeping a detailed sketch book which he does even to
this day when he travels.
About that same time, Ando relates that he discovered a book
about Le Corbusier in a secondhand bookstore in Osaka. It took several weeks to save
enough money to buy it. Once in his possession, Ando says, "I traced the drawings of
his early period so many times that all the pages turned black. In my mind, I quite often
wonder how Le Corbusier would have thought about this project or that." When he
visited Marseilles, Ando recalls visiting Corbu's Unite d'Habitation, and being intrigued
by the dynamic use of concrete. Although concrete (along with steel and glass) is Ando's
favorite material, he has used wood in a few rare projects, including the Japan Pavilion
for Expo '92 in Spain.
Japan Pavillion, Expo '92,
Sevilla, Spain
Ando's concrete is often referred to as
"smooth-as-silk." He explains that the quality of construction does not depend
on the mix itself, but rather on the form work into which the concrete is cast. Because of
the tradition of wooden architecture" in Japan, the craft level of carpentry is very
high. Wooden form work, where not a single drop of water will escape from the seams of the
forms depends on this. Watertight forms are essential. Otherwise, holes can appear and the
surface can crack.
His form moulds, or wooden shuttering (as it is called in
Japan), are even varnished to achieve smooth-as-silk finish to the concrete. The evenly
spaced holes in the concrete, that have become almost an Ando trademark, are the result of
bolts that hold the shuttering together. Ando's concrete is both structure and surface,
never camouflaged or plastered over.
Although Ando has a preference for concrete, it is not part of
the Japanese building tradition. "Most Japanese houses are built with wood and
paper," he explains, "including my own. I have lived there since I was a child.
It is like my cave, I'm very comfortable there." He explained that he was the
firstborn of twin boys. When he was two, it was decided that his maternal grandmother
would raise him, and he was given her name, Ando. They first lived near the port of Osaka
before moving to where he lives today.
Ando's appreciation of the carpenter's craft comes partially
because as he describes, "I spent a lot of time as a child observing in a woodworking
shop across" the street from the house where I grew up. I became interested in trying
to make shapes out of wood. With young eyes and sensitivities, I watched how trees grew,
altered by how the sun hit it, changing the qualities of the lumber produced. I came to
understand the absolute balance between a form and the material from which it is made. I
experienced the inner struggle inherent in the human act of applying will to give birth to
a form."
Ando continues, "Later my interest gradually concentrated
on architecture, which makes possible the consideration of intimate relations between
material and form, and between volume and human life. The aim of my design is, while
embodying my own architectural theories, to impart rich meaning to spaces through natural
elements and the many aspects of daily life. In other words, I try to relate the fixed
form and compositional method to the kind of life that will be lived in the given space
and to local regional society. My mainstay in selecting the solutions to these problems,
is my independent architectural theory ordered on the basis of a geometry of simple forms,
my own ideas of life, and my emotions as a Japanese."
Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum,
Kagawa, Japan
As he celebrated his fifty-fourth birthday on September 13, his
portfolio boasted not only the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the profession's
highest honor, but also the gold medal of the French Academy, plus numerous other medals
and honorary fellow designations from Finland, the United States, and Great Britain. In
addition, he has virtually every art and architecture prize his own country can bestow, as
well as Denmark's Carlsberg Architectural Prize.
In addition to these prestigious honors, Ando, in spite of no
architectural degree, has been a visiting professor in the United States at such
institutions as Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. In addition, he has given many lectures at
other schools including Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of
California at Berkeley, Rice, and University of Pennsylvania, as well as the leading
colleges of England, France, and many other countries.
"I was born and raised in Japan. I do my work here,"
says Ando (although he is rapidly going global), and extensive work it is. In 1969, he set
up his practice in his home town of Osaka, in contrast to the prevailing thought that an
of office in Tokyo was necessary to success.
As he explains, "My first attempts at designs were of small
wooden houses, some interiors and furniture. I did not apprentice to another architect
because every time I tried, I was fired for my stubbornness and temper." His first
commissions was for a young couple with a child who wanted their old tenement redesigned.
After it was accomplished, they had twins so the house for three was no longer sufficient
for a family of five. They jokingly said that Ando should be responsible, so he bought the
house and made it his office. After changing that structure many times, it was finally
replaced by his current concrete building.
Located not far from Osaka Station, Ando's studio has two floors
below ground and five above. He describe it as follows: "An atrium pierces the upper
five floors broadening as it rises. The stepped ranks of floors, accessed by means of a
winding staircase, doubles as a kind of lecture hall, the speaker using the staircase as a
podium to address an audience assembled on the tiers of floors. Each level also has a
narrow balcony for access to bookshelves. The second level is primarily for drawing
boards, and the ground floor is my office and conference space." The office is
managed by his wife, Yumiko Ando, who also acts as his translator. A four-footed friend is
also in residence there most of time, their dog named "Le Corbusier."
In addition to Corbusier, Ando mentions Mies van der Rohe, Alvar
Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn of importance in his development. He described a
visit to Wright's original Imperial Hotel when he was only seventeen. "I had never
heard of him, nor did I know anything about the building. But the Imperial Hotel
fascinated me and my curiosity took me inside. I remember a dark, narrow corridor with an
extremely low ceiling leading into a huge hall. It was like walking through a cave. I
think Wright learned the most important aspect of architecture, the treatment of space,
from Japanese architecture. When I visited Falling Water in Pennsylvania, I found
that same sensibility of space. But there was the additional natural sounds of nature that
appealed to me."
It was in 1975 that Ando's work burst on the scene with the
completion of a small row house in Osaka, called Row House, Sumiyoshi (Azuma) . In his own
words, "This small house was the point of origin for my subsequent work. It is a
memorable building for me, one of which I am very fond. This house replaced the middle
portion of three row houses in an older section of central Osaka. My intention was to
insert a concrete box in this center section and to create a microcosm within it, a simple
composition with diverse spaces and dramatized by light. The house completely closes
itself from the street. An indentation on the front wall serves as entry. A courtyard is
the center of the space, flanked on one side on the first floor by the living room on one
side, and on the other: the kitchen, dining room and bath. The second floor is a master
bedroom on one side, and the children's on the other."
Koji Taki, one of the Japan's leading writers, thinks of Tadao
Ando as "a builder rather than an architect," adding immediately that he does
not intend any negative nuance in the term, as he says, "quite the contrary...the
appellation 'builder' may be read as a term of praise." He praised Ando's Azuma
residence saying, "The value of (this house) as architecture does not necessary come
from some stylistic method or abstract concept aimed at making Architecture out of a
commission for a house in Osaka; it comes instead from a fundamental way of thinking about
building a house for an inhabitant. Ando's approach is to connect the art of building to
the art of living." Most of Ando's peers and architectural critics agreed, as
evidenced by the Japanese Architectural Institute's annual award for the house.
Ando says he quite often asks himself if he is happy being an
architect. "I truly enjoy making things with my hands," he says, "but I
can't build a house on my own. When I give my drawings to the carpenters and craftsmen, I
begin worrying because I'm not participating in the process of actually building." An
artist, as much as a builder or architect, Ando's sketches and drawings included in his
numerous exhibitions have received praise from many critics around the world.
In terms of building projects outside of Japan, in 1991, he was
asked to design the gallery to display Japanese folding screens at The Art Institute of
Chicago. In 1992, his Japan Pavilion for Expo in Seville, Spain attracted favorable
attention. Catherine Slessor writing in The Architectural Review , called it a
supreme embodiment of the traditional Japanese aesthetic of elevating "inherent
natural and unadorned beauty as the purest manifestation of Japanese cultural
identity."
His first commission in a totally foreign setting was to build
an art school in northern Italy for Benetton at Treviso, which is still under
construction. He also completed a Seminar House adjacent to, and for, the Vitra furniture
manufacturers in Germany.
An exhibition of Ando's work at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York in 1991 for which he received critical praise was his auspicious U.S. debut. The New
York Times' Paul Goldberger, in reviewing the exhibit, called his work "an
extraordinary" and profound meditation on abstract form, physical space and
light...his buildings are at once powerful and restrained...sensual and reserved."
Benjamin Forgey in the Washington Post wrote that the
exhibit ''firmly establishes Ando as one of the preeminent living architects in the
world" And further, that Ando, "demonstrates an uncanny ability to conjoin East
and West in buildings and plans of resonant purity and complex symbolism...Ando is a very
Japanese architect and yet (his works) possess an indelible timelessness and
universality."
Ando explains, "The industrial revolution made possible the
production of standardized building materials, including concrete, steel and glass, and
techniques for using these materials are found in architecture worldwide, thus
transcending nationality to produce a Modernism that is international, an open principle.
I am applying this vocabulary in an enclosed realm of life styles and regional
differences. Many attempts have been made before to link this open vocabulary to the
indigenous Japanese tradition of aesthetics and forms. For a number of reasons, including
the vastly different life styles of the past to today, most of these attempts failed. My
effort is to preserve Japanese residential architecture's intimate connection with nature
and the openness to the natural world, what I call enclosed Modern Architecture, a
restoration of the unity between house and nature."
Church on the Water, Hokkaido, Japan
Church on the Water,
another view Hokkaido, Japan
In addition to light and shadow, concrete and steel, views, and
complete enclosure, another common theme to his work is the use of underground space. A
number of his houses, including Koshino House, Iwasa House, the atelier Yoshie Inaba, the
Water Temple, and several of his museums, all make extensive use of space underground.
Another recurring feature of Ando's buildings is his use of stairs. The Children's Museum
at Hyogo provides a long broad stepped ramp, accompanied by cascading pools of water as
the entrance; in Chikatsu Asuka Historical Museum, the entire roof is a stepped plaza
providing an artificial hill from which the actual burial mounds can be viewed. His Water
Temple is entered through a stairway that parts the water of a lotus filled pool that is
actually the roof of the ceremonial rooms, the latter being painted bright vermilion, a
rare departure from Ando's usual monochromatic pallet.
Approximately half of Koshino house is underground. Comprised of
two rectangular volumes of different size, they are arranged in parallel, connected by a
corridor, and flank a courtyard. Four years after the original house was completed, an
atelier was added, completely underground, and defined by a by a quarter-circle wall.
Light comes in through narrow slits in walls and ceilings, in addition to some large
windows in the living room facing the outdoor court.
One of his most praised projects is the Church of the Light in
Osaka. It's simplicity is that it is no more than a concrete box with glazed slits
piercing and intersecting the wall behind the altar, allowing sunlight to form a bright
cross in the otherwise darkened interior. Ando says of the Church on the Water, "By
placing a cross in a body of flowing water, I wanted to express the idea of God as
existing in one's heart and mind. I also wanted to create a space where one can sit and
meditate."
Time's, a complex of fashion shops in Kyoto, was conceived to
take advantage of the site on the Takase River, not a large stream but fondly regarded by
the town's people. Approaches to the shops are channeled past the river by the use of a
water level plaza and a bridge-like deck above the plaza.
Rokko Housing, I and II,
an aerial view Hyogo, Japan
Rokko Housing, an apartment complex which is embedded in a
hillside with a spectacular view of Osaka Bay, is considered by Ando as best representing
many of his ideas. Each apartment module is unique but of uniform size, 18' X 18'. The
first phase was 20 units, and then the second phase ten years later and on a site adjacent
to the first, 50 units. "I think this is one of my most important works," says
Ando. Plans are already in the formative stage for another third phase of the project.
Ando's work methods involve his original concept sketches being
drawn up as lans by his staff members, that can number as high as twenty at any one time.
"Each project is executed by one person from my staff and myself," he explains,
"working as a team of two. When we have eight projects, we have eight people on
staff, and once we start we don't have any rest until it is finished. There are also some
part time students working in the office always."
Thom Mayne, a California architect, who visited Japan and many
of Ando's buildings wrote in Graphis in 1991, "I am struck by his relentless
single mindedness, a focus so outwardly directed from a powerful inner vision that it
seems quite literally to take no account whatsoever of other 'schools' or 'movements'
which may be currently under discussion."
Asked once to define "architecture" Ando's response
was "Chohatsu suru hako," translated as "the box that provokes."
Elaborating on that phrase, Ando says, "I have the somewhat arrogant belief that the
way people lead lives can be directed, even if by a little, by means of
architecture." He has also said on other occasions, "I do not believe
architecture should speak too much. It should remain silent and let nature in the guise of
sunlight and wind speak."
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