For my construction project i've chosen Tadao Ando as my architect. His always fascinated me and although i struggle to understand his work, the more i look and explore it the better grasp i have of it.
QUOTE: “…order is necessary to give life dignity. Establishing order imposes restrictions, but I believe it cultivates extraordinary things in people.”
Tadao Ando
Ando’s work aims to reconnect man with man, and man with nature through architecture.
He insists that architecture must exceed the notion of an independent art form, and as follows, include itself primarily with the enrichment of the human spirit. The simplicity of such a notion contradicts the vast complexity of the ideas and relations that frame only the superficial simplicity of his buildings. A respect of Ando’s work arises principally for his regard, and vital desire to include moral and ethical beliefs that depict his philosophy, and which underlie and are expressed through all of his work, thus his simple forms and bare concrete surfaces must not be labeled merely as his aesthetic preference, but as an expression of his underlying ethical position.
Fabricated generally from the hardest of materials- concrete, steel and glass- Ando’s buildings can appear harsh and bland, yet at the same time, surprisingly gentle as they correlate a balance between the form and its material. Ando has described how his architecture constantly oscillates between the extremes of one element and its partner- inside and out, east and west, past and future, part and whole, abstraction an representation, simplicity and complexity- responding to the benumbed impoverishment of the spirit.
“In Japan, meaning is produced not through abrupt changes but through subtle variation… the sensory world which Ando is striving to create is more a world of monumentality than a world rich in formal changes”, (Koij Taki), thus Japanese monumentality, though subtle changes, can give rise to meaning.[1] Ando taught himself by observation, which was intensify by his believed innate sensitivity to three-dimensional spaces, and the experimentation of concepts that where inspired by his travels to various countries. The greatest and most powerful influence on Ando’s work was the ethereal aspects of his countries traditional Sukiya architecture, whereby light and shade, time and season, are the principal components of the user’s experience. In his architecture, the user enters into Ando’s world alone- perceiving the tactile materiality of the structure, the framing and infusion of nature, the ordering of their experiences in a sequential manner, and the interaction of the whole with the viewer’s own cultural background. “In other words, my spaces relate to the fundamental aspects of humanity” (T. Ando)[2]
Japanese society traditionally views the ‘world of man; and the ‘natural world’ as continuous, thus defining architecture as one with nature. Through his work, Ando proposes order against the randomness of Sukiya, whilst presenting a sense of randomness to contradict the order of Modernism, for his perceives the modern world as a soulless dwelling, in which convenience is sought at the expense of spiritual richness. In contrast to the informal and addictive planning of Sukiya, which directed space out from man towards the exterior landscape, Ando composes his buildings as geometrical volumes that centralize space around the inhabitant; their harmony of proportion relates them to man in the classical sense. Against the rationalism of Modernism, with its search for universal solution and the primacy that it gave to theory, Ando introduces irrationality to reflect the unpredictability of human life.
Tadao Ando
Ando’s work aims to reconnect man with man, and man with nature through architecture.
He insists that architecture must exceed the notion of an independent art form, and as follows, include itself primarily with the enrichment of the human spirit. The simplicity of such a notion contradicts the vast complexity of the ideas and relations that frame only the superficial simplicity of his buildings. A respect of Ando’s work arises principally for his regard, and vital desire to include moral and ethical beliefs that depict his philosophy, and which underlie and are expressed through all of his work, thus his simple forms and bare concrete surfaces must not be labeled merely as his aesthetic preference, but as an expression of his underlying ethical position.
Fabricated generally from the hardest of materials- concrete, steel and glass- Ando’s buildings can appear harsh and bland, yet at the same time, surprisingly gentle as they correlate a balance between the form and its material. Ando has described how his architecture constantly oscillates between the extremes of one element and its partner- inside and out, east and west, past and future, part and whole, abstraction an representation, simplicity and complexity- responding to the benumbed impoverishment of the spirit.
“In Japan, meaning is produced not through abrupt changes but through subtle variation… the sensory world which Ando is striving to create is more a world of monumentality than a world rich in formal changes”, (Koij Taki), thus Japanese monumentality, though subtle changes, can give rise to meaning.[1] Ando taught himself by observation, which was intensify by his believed innate sensitivity to three-dimensional spaces, and the experimentation of concepts that where inspired by his travels to various countries. The greatest and most powerful influence on Ando’s work was the ethereal aspects of his countries traditional Sukiya architecture, whereby light and shade, time and season, are the principal components of the user’s experience. In his architecture, the user enters into Ando’s world alone- perceiving the tactile materiality of the structure, the framing and infusion of nature, the ordering of their experiences in a sequential manner, and the interaction of the whole with the viewer’s own cultural background. “In other words, my spaces relate to the fundamental aspects of humanity” (T. Ando)[2]
Japanese society traditionally views the ‘world of man; and the ‘natural world’ as continuous, thus defining architecture as one with nature. Through his work, Ando proposes order against the randomness of Sukiya, whilst presenting a sense of randomness to contradict the order of Modernism, for his perceives the modern world as a soulless dwelling, in which convenience is sought at the expense of spiritual richness. In contrast to the informal and addictive planning of Sukiya, which directed space out from man towards the exterior landscape, Ando composes his buildings as geometrical volumes that centralize space around the inhabitant; their harmony of proportion relates them to man in the classical sense. Against the rationalism of Modernism, with its search for universal solution and the primacy that it gave to theory, Ando introduces irrationality to reflect the unpredictability of human life.
[1] Tom Heneghan, The Colours of Light; Tadao Ando Architecture; Richard Pare Photography, Phaidon Press Limited, Regent’s Wharf, London, 1996, p.16
[2] ibid, p.14
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