Meet Tadao Ando

INTERVIEW WITH TADAO ANDO
from http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ando.html



what is the best moment of the day?
no particular moment.
morning maybe good because of the feeling of beginning.

what kind of music do you listen to at the moment?
mostly classic.

what books do you have on your bedside table?
I am interested in things happening around me, and I need to understand
what's going on in other artistic sectors like music and literature.
I read a lot, but nothing comes to mind at the moment.

do you read architecture and design magazines?
I don't read them. just look at it.

I assume you notice how women dress.
do you have any preferences?
I don't look so closely at women's fashion, but from the 20th century on,
people have had the freedom to express themselves and their individualities,
and fashion is one of the most fundamental ways in which they do this,
men and women are equally able to express themselves.

what kind of clothes do you avoid wearing?
nothing in particular.

do you have any pets?
a dog named 'le corbusier'.

where do you work on your designs and projects?
once I traveled a lot, to see the nature, the countryside and the cities,
with a sketchbook... a practice I continue today.
but plans actually I draw in my office.

who would you like to design something for?
I believe that the way people live can be directed a little by architecture.
I would like my architecture to inspire people to use their own resources,
to move into the future.
although now we are more and more governed by the american way
of thinking, money, the economy...
I hope that now people will shift to a more european way (of thinking),
culture, individuality, and that people move towards new goals.
so for me to be able to contribute to this would be great.

do you discuss or exchange ideas with other architects?
not much.

describe your style, like a good friend of yours would describe it.
walls are the most basic elements of architecture,
and in all my works, light is an important factor.
the primary reason is to create a place for the individual,
a zone for oneself within society.
its very difficult to explain or describe my style, I hope the answer will
come out of the interview.

what project has given you the most satisfaction?
as an architect you have to do your best work for any project,
but for me the most satisfying thing is when architecture can
do something to make people's lives better, to inspire them.

do you try to find meeting points between asian and european cultures?
I don't see them as opposites, the west and the east,
but for example western society seems to be centered on
american culture.
but I think it is important to understand that apart from that
main culture, there are so many other cultures,
and it is necessary to respect them all and their differences.

is there any architect from the past you admire?
of course I learned from history, from the renaissance,
from mies van der rohe, le corbusier, terragni... many architects.

what current architects do you appreciate?
like with the work of the past, as an architect you have to look around
and see what your contemporaries are creating,
for my contemporaries I have respect and interest.

did you always want to be an architect?
right from the beginning yes, but in my life I have done many things,
at one time I was a boxer...
I was never a good student.
I always preferred learning things on my own.



FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Tadao Ando's body of work is known for the creative use of natural light and for architectures that follow the natural forms of the landscape (rather than disturbing the landscape by making it conform to the constructed space of a building). The architect's buildings are often characterized by complex three-dimensional circulation paths. These paths interweave between interior and exterior spaces formed both inside large-scale geometric shapes and in the spaces between them.

His "Row House in Sumiyoshi" (Azuma House), a small two-story, cast-in-place concrete house completed in 1976, is an early work that begins to show elements of his characteristic style. It consists of three equally sized rectangular volumes: two enclosed volumes of interior spaces separated by an open courtyard. By nature of the courtyard's position between the two interior volumes, it becomes an integral part of the house's circulation system.

Ando's housing complex at Rokko, just outside Kobe, is a complex warren of terraces and balconies and atriums and shafts. The designs for Rokko Housing One (1983) and for Rokko Housing Two (1993) illustrate a range of issues in the traditional architectural vocabulary -- the interplay of solid and void, the alternatives of open and closed, the contrasts of light and darkness. More significantly, Ando's noteworthy achievement in these clustered buildings is site specific -- the structures survived undamaged after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. New York Times architectural critic Paul Goldberger argues convincingly that "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 for nothing that Frank Lloyd Wright more freely admitted to the influences of Japanese architecture than of anything American." Like Ando, Wright's site specific decision-making anticipated seismic activity; and like Ando's several Hyōgo-Awaji buildings, Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo did survive the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.