Tadao Ando

Infobox Architect
name = Tadao Ando
nationality = Japan
birth_date=birth date and age|1941|9|13
birth_place = Osaka
death_date =
death_place =
practice_name = Tadao Ando Architects & Associates
significant_buildings =
*Row House, Sumiyoshi, 1979
*Water Temple, Awaji Island, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, 1991
*The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, Missouri, 2001
*Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, 2002
*Chichu Art Museum, Naoshima, Kagawa prefecture, Japan, 2004
significant_projects =
*Rokko Housing I, II, III, Rokko, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, 1983, 1993, 1999
*Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, UK, 2003
significant_design =
awards =
*Annual Architectural Prize, Japan, 1979
*Cultural Design Prize, Japan, 1983
*Alvar Aalto Medal, Finland, 1985
*Gold Medal of Architecture, France, 1989
*Carlsberg Architectural Prize, Denmark, 1992
*Japan Art Academy Prize, Japan, 1993
*Pritzker Architecture Prize, 1995
*Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France, 1995
*Praemium Imperiale First “FRATE SOLE” Award in Architecture, Japan, 1996
*Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France, 1997
*Royal Gold Medal, Great Britain, 1997
*American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, U.S.A., 2002
*UIA Gold Meda, Turkey, 2005 |nihongo|Tadao Ando|安藤 忠雄|Andō Tadao|extra=born September 13, 1941, in Osaka, Japan is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorised 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. [ [http://www.pritzkerprize.com/andorel.htm Ando 1995, Prtizker Prize web page.] ] He donated the $100,000 prize money to the orphans of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. [Muschamp, Herbert. (1995). [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0DF1E39F932A1575AC0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3 "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. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0DF103AF930A15757C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3 "Architecture View: 'Laureate' in a Land of Zen and Microchips,"] "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." [see above] ] 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. [http://www.nbm.org/blueprints/summer96/page4/page4.htm "Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel,"] National Building Museum exhibition.]

Completed projects gallery, selected

Completed projects list

References

*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

* [http://www.andotadao.org Tadao Ando unofficial website created and maintained by fans]
* [http://www.myspace.com/tadao_ando Tadao Ando MySpace profile created and maintained by fans]
* [http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Tadao_Ando.html Tadao Ando page at greatbuildingsonline.com]
* [http://archrecord.construction.com/people/interviews/archives/0205Ando.asp Architectural Record Magazine | Interviews | Tadao Ando]
* [http://blog.miragestudio7.com/2005/11/tadao-ando-official-website Read About Tadao Ando Cyber-Squatting Domain Names]
* [http://www.nou-sera.com/architect/ando.html#Anchor-33537 Tadao Ando]
* [http://www.tadaoando.net Tadao Ando unofficial website(cyber-squatting)]
* [http://www.archiquotes.info Caricature of Tadao Ando at ArchiQuotes.info]
* [http://www.kmpfurniture.com/index.php?page=news&id=77 Tadao Ando his Great architecture]
* [http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Tadao_Ando.html Tadao Ando page at greatbuildings.com]
*archINFORM|arch|474
* [http://www.architectour.net/architetti/scheda_arc.php?id_arc=135&language=1 Tadao Ando | architectour.net]
* [http://www.sevillasigloxx.com/2008/01/desaparecidos-el-pabelln-de-japn.html Tadao Japanese Pavillion in 1992 Expo]

Persondata
NAME = Ando, Tadao
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Japanese architect
DATE OF BIRTH = September 13, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH = Osaka, Japan
DATE OF DEATH =
PLACE OF DEATH =