Tadao Ando is a Japanese autodidact architect whose approach to architecture and landscape was categorized by architectural historian Francesco Dal Co as "critical regionalism".
19 Facts About Tadao Ando
2.
Tadao Ando is the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize.
3.
Tadao Ando worked as a boxer and fighter before settling on the profession of architect, despite never having formal training in the field.
4.
Tadao Ando attended night classes to learn drawing and took correspondence courses on interior design.
5.
Tadao Ando visited buildings designed by renowned architects like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Louis Kahn before returning to Osaka in 1968 to establish his own design studio, Tadao Ando Architects and Associates.
6.
Tadao Ando was raised in Japan where the religion and style of life strongly influenced his architecture and design.
7.
Tadao Ando favors designing complex spatial circulation while maintaining the appearance of simplicity.
8.
Werner Blaser has said, "Good buildings by Tadao Ando create memorable identity and therefore publicity, which in turn attracts the public and promotes market penetration".
9.
Besides Japanese religious architecture, Tadao Ando has designed Christian churches, such as the Church of the Light and the Church in Tarumi.
10.
Tadao Ando believes there should be no difference in designing religious architecture and houses.
11.
Besides speaking of the spirit of architecture, Tadao Ando emphasises the association between nature and architecture.
12.
Tadao Ando intends for people to easily experience the spirit and beauty of nature through architecture.
13.
Tadao Ando believes architecture is responsible for performing the attitude of the site and makes it visible.
14.
In 1995, Tadao Ando won the Pritzker Prize for architecture, considered the highest distinction in the field.
15.
Tadao Ando donated the $100,000 prize money to the orphans of the 1995 Kobe earthquake.
16.
Tadao Ando's buildings are often characterized by complex three-dimensional circulation paths.
17.
Tadao Ando's "Row House in Sumiyoshi", a small two-story, cast-in-place concrete house completed in 1976, is an early work which began to show elements of his characteristic style.
18.
Tadao Ando's housing complex at Rokko, just outside Kobe, is a complex warren of terraces and balconies, atriums and shafts.
19.
Tadao 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 without reason that Frank Lloyd Wright more freely admitted to the influences of Japanese architecture than of anything American.