tadao Ando

Website: http://www.tadao-ando.com

Biography:

Ando was born a few minutes before his twin brother in 1941 in Osaka, Japan. From the age of 10 to 17 Tadao worked at local carpenter, He also had worked as a truck driver and boxer. His first interest in architecture was nourished in Tadao’s 15 by buying a book of Le Corbusier sketches. His studying was very unusual. “I was never a good student. I always preferred learning things on my own outside of class. When I was about 18, I started to visit temples, shrines and tea houses in Kyoto and Nara. I was studying architecture by going to see actual building, and reading books about them.” As a self-taught architect, he keeps his Japanese culture and language in mind while he travels around Europe. The simplicity of his architecture is mainly influenced by Japanese culture. he believes that architecture can change society, that “to change the dwelling is to change the city and to reform society”. “I am interested in a dialogue with the architecture of the past”, Tadao Ando says, “but it must be filtered through my own vision and my own experience. I am indebted to Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but the same way, I take what they did and interpret it in my own fashion.” Tadao Ando is the world’s greatest living architect. If Tadao Ando has one weakness it may by a difficulty in translating the grandeur of his smaller buildings to a larger scale.

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