Tadao Ando

Born 1941 · Japanese · 26 buildings on the wall

Tadao Ando (born 1941) is a Japanese architect, self-taught and once a boxer, known for smooth cast-in-place concrete, simple geometry and the way he draws light, water and landscape into his buildings. The historian Francesco Dal Co described his work as "critical regionalism", and Ando won the Pritzker Prize in 1995.

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His Row House in Sumiyoshi in Osaka (1976) is a small two-storey concrete house with no outside windows, lit instead through a central courtyard crossed by a walkway. The Church of the Light in Ibaraki (1989) lets daylight in through a cross cut into the concrete wall behind the altar, from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. On the island of Naoshima, the Chichu Art Museum (2004) is buried underground yet lights much of its art, including paintings from Monet's Water Lilies series, with daylight alone. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2002) sets three long pavilions in a reflecting pond. Tadao Ando's projects are studied for how one material, daylight and a careful route through a building can create calm.

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