TADAO ANDO
Tadao Ando is one of Japan’s leading contemporary architects. He is best known of his minimalist concrete buildings. He was born the 13th of september of 1941 in Osaka. Ando had various careers, including professional boxer, before he became a self-taught architect and opened his main studio in Osaka in 1969. At the firsts years as an architect he made some small-scale residential buildings in Japan such as the Azuma house and the Koshino house. The Ando style is represented on every building, a good example is the Church of water, where he obtain harmony between the environment and the concrete and glass building.
Ando’s style has won some numerous international awards as the Carlsberg Architectural Prize (1992), the Pritzker Prize (1995), and gold medals from both the Royal Institute of British Architects (1997) and the American Institute of Architects (2002).
«I don’t believe architecture has to speak too much it should remain silent and let nature in the guise of sunlight and wind»
This Ando’s quote has to make us rethink some ideas. From my point of view, the architecture of the future has to be as Ando’s says, architecture has to be aware of environment, it should be related whith the space, needs to use space and not damage it. Architecture needs to create optimum spaces, where nature and people are able to connect on a special way. Human needs nature, and nature needs our responsability, I think this quote should be the base of our future architecture. Here are some examples of what Tadao Ando tryes to obtain from a building:
We can observe how Ando try to integrate nature on this church, creating an optimum space for praying.
Bibliography:
Photo1: https://www.pinterest.es/gingercn2000/arquitectura/
Photo2: https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/nature-image-transcendent-church-water-tadao-ando
Photo3: https://arquitecturaycristianismo.com/2012/09/23/la-iglesia-del-agua-de-tadao-ando/
Biography: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ando-Tadao