24 Projects
About Tadao Ando
Japanese architect. He was born in Osaka, and studied architecture through the in situ of European, American and Japanese models observation.
He opened his own architectural practice in 1969, and in 1979 won the annual prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan Row home in the neighborhood of Sumiyoshi in Osaka, concrete apartment block located in a traditional Japanese homes. Here are some other important works, like the Church water (1985) Tomanu, Hokkaido, where banks are oriented towards an artificial lake a concrete cross and the Children’s Museum (1990) it arises in Himeji succeed in the province of Hyogo. Ando is also a prolific theorist, considered one of the spokesmen of critical regionalism, which rejects the indiscriminate use of modern architecture in all cultures around the world.
His work combines shapes and materials of the modern movement with Japanese, especially in how to integrate the buildings in their natural environment and spatial traditional aesthetic principles. One of its features is the use of smooth concrete, with visible marks of the formwork, to create planes tectonic murals, stripped of all ornamentation, which serve as surfaces to capture light.
In 1992 he designed the Japan Pavilion for the International Exposition in Seville, built in wood following the Japanese building tradition. In 1995 he was awarded the Pritzker Prize, considered the equivalent to the Nobel Prize for architecture.
