Tadao Ando is a renowned Japanese architect known for his minimalist concrete designs. He was self-taught and studied both traditional Japanese architecture and modern Western styles. A key work is the Church of Light (1995), built using concrete and defined by interplays of light and darkness. It won Ando the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Other works highlighted include the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, built into a seaside landscape using concrete and stone, and the Koshino House, featuring parallel concrete volumes connected underground.

1. ARCHITECT TADAO ANDO
PRESENTED BY  ABHISHEK GOEL
AMAN NEGI
PRADEEP VERMA
III RD YEAR - C

2. BIOGRAPHY
•Tadao Ando was born in Osaka, Japan, on 13TH SEPTEMBER 1941.
• The self-educated architect with roots in Osaka, he spent time in
nearby Kyoto and Nara, studying first-hand the great monuments of
traditional Japanese architecture.
• Between 1962 and 1969 he traveled to the United States, Europe,
and Africa, learning about Western architecture, history, and
techniques.
• His studies of both traditional Japanese and modern architecture had
a profound influence on his work and resulted in a unique blend of these rich traditions.
• In 1968, Ando established Tadao Ando Architect and Associates in Osaka.
• He is an honorary fellow in the architecture academies of six countries; he has been a visiting
professor at Yale, Columbia, and Harvard Universities; and in 1997, he became Professor of
Architecture at Tokyo University.

3. EARLY LIFE
•Ando was born in 1941 in Minato-ku, Osaka, Japan, and was
raised in the city of Asahi-ku. He worked as a truck driver and
boxer before settling on the profession of architect, despite
never having formal training in the field.
•Struck by the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Imperial Hotel on a
trip to Tokyo as a second year high school student, he
eventually decided to end his boxing career less than two years
after graduating from high school to pursue architecture.
•He attended night classes to learn drawing and took
correspondence courses on interior design. He visited buildings
designed by 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.
ANDO AT HIS YOUNG YEARS
ANDO IN EARLY 90’S

4. STYLE AND PHILOSOPHY
• Considered a patron of Minimalism but doesn’t compromises with the design
•Pure space enveloped in concrete rectangular forms - pure space and simple form
• The column has become merely a symbol that addresses culture and history
• Extensive use of Concrete and glass in the pure form
• Interior of the building are the form itself, ridicules the idea of masking it
• Simplified, rectilinear forms and bare, naked concrete walls that define the spaces
within
• Style- element of Light, Water through concrete and glass

5. AWARDS
Ando has received numerous architecture awards, including the prestigious.
•Alvar Aalto Medal
1985
•Pritzker Architecture Prize
1995 (Church Of Light, Ibaraki, Osaka, Japan)
•Royal Gold Medal
1997
•AIA Gold Medal
2002
•International Union Of Architects Gold Medal
2005
•James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant Design
2008 (Morimoto, New York, United States)

6. CHURCH OF
LIGHT

7. TYPICAL
PLAN
OF
CHURC
H OF
LIGHT

8. CHURCH OF LIGHT, IBARAKI, OSAKA, JAPAN
Design: 1987-88
Construction: 1988-89
• Located in a quiet residential suburb of Osaka, this church derives its orientation from the
direction of the sun.
•The size of its site is only 838.6 Square meters and the size of the building itself is only 113.3
square meters, which` is roughly the size of a small house.
• It consists of a rectangular volume sliced through at a fifteen-degree angle by a freestanding
concrete wall that separates the entrance from the chapel. This division creates a threshold
between the exterior and the sacred interior spaces.
• The floor and pews are made of rough scaffolding planks, which emphasize the humble
character of the space.
LIGHT CREATES A SPIRITUAL CALM AND SENSE OF AWE…

9. • Ando likes to use materials of substance for the
details of buildings because the tactile
experience enhances our perception of the
architecture.
• The space of the chapel is defined by light, the
strong contrast between light and solid. In the
chapel light enters from behind the altar from a
cross cut in the concrete wall that extends
vertically from floor to ceiling and horizontally
from wall to wall, aligning perfectly with the joints
in the concrete. At this intersection of light and
solid the occupant is meant to become aware of
the deep division between the spiritual and the
secular within himself or herself.

10. LIGHTING INSIDE THE CHURCH

12. Church of the Light
• Social:
His use of materials accommodated
the town of Osaka’s economical
restraints
• Scientific:
With the advent of “Ando Concrete”
which was much more dense,
enabled less material to be used and
it efficiently carried the same loads
• Symbolic:
His minimalist approach to
architecture creates a kind of purity
and elegance in which light and
darkness guides the viewer, and is
able to evoke emotions

13. KOSHINO HOUSE,
ASHIYA JAPAN

14. Design: 1979-80
Construction: 1980-81
• Two different-sized concrete boxes, arranged in parallel to accommodate existing trees, are
half-buried in the verdant slope of a national park.
• An underground corridor links the two boxes, which flank a courtyard.
•It features two parallel concrete rectangular confines. The forms are partially buried into the
sloping ground of a national park and become a compositional addition to the landscape.
Placed carefully as to not disrupt the pre-existing trees on the site, the structure responds to
the adjacent ecosystem while the concrete forms address a more general nature through a
playful manipulation of light.
•The northern volume consists of a two-storey
height containing a double height
living room, a kitchen and a dining room
on the first floor with the master
bedroom and a study on the second
floor. The southern mass then consists
of six linearly organized children’s
bedrooms, a bathroom and a lobby.
Connecting the two spaces is a below
grade tunnel that lies beneath the
exterior stairs of the courtyard.

16. EVOLUTION OF DESIGN

20. SECTION
OF THE
SITE
3D VIEW

21. • An underground corridor links the two boxes, which flank a
courtyard.
• The smoothly finished, stepped courtyard symbolizes the natural
contour of the site. Slits cut through the walls facing the courtyard are
intended to generate dynamic plays of light and shadow on the
interior spaces.
Addition Design: 1983
Addition Construction: 1983-84
• An atelier that was added four years after the main residence was
built is buried in the ground at the upper part of the slope.
• The addition is separated from the older building by a lawn. A curved
wall defines its territory.
•Cut into that wall is a slit that not only provides light at the top, but it
also creates complex patterns of intersecting curves along the wall.
• By introducing the curved wall and curved intersections of light to
the previously rectilinear scheme

23. 2) NAOSHIMA CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM, NAOSHIMA, JAPAN
Design: 1988-90
Construction: 1990-92
• Naoshima is a small island in the Inland Sea of
Japan.
• The site selected for the contemporary art museum is
on the bluff of a narrow cape at the island's southern tip
and overlooks the quiet surf below; in fact, the
museum's design is oriented to receive visitors who
arrive by ship.
• A stepped plaza that functions as the museum's
entrance also houses an underground annex and
further doubles as a stage for outdoor performances.
• After climbing the plaza steps that the stone rubble
walls of the main museum come into sight.

24. • After the slope and the main building's entrance, the
large underground art gallery, which is two levels high
comes.
• A hotel building, gallery, and stepped terrace all open
towards the ocean, whose tranquil presence is drawn
into the interior spaces.
• Like outdoor sculpture in a museum compound, this
architecture functions as an earthwork to produce a
new landscape amid the vastness of nature.
THE ANNEX 
Design: 1993-94
Construction: 1994-95
• Further up the slope behind the Naoshima
Contemporary Art Museum is the Annex, the second
phase of Ando's project at Naoshima. Currently, the
Annex functions primarily as a luxury hotel, but Ando
hopes that it will eventually become an exhibition
space.

25. • Like the main complex, the Annex is partially buried into the hillside and integrated within the
surrounding landscape. It can be reached by a cable car or by "processional" walking paths which
enable the visitor to sustain a strong connection to the abundant nature and spectacular scenery.
• The Annex is an elliptical building, framed by rectilinear outer walls made of the same stones that were
used on the earlier buildings.
• The focus of the Annex is its central open-air "courtyard"— an elliptical pool that was conceived as a
contemplative water sculpture.
• A patio surrounding the pool serves as an outdoor gallery and entryway to the guest rooms, each with a
private view of the sea.
• The entrance to the Annex is decorated with a cascade of water that appears to flow to the ocean
THE ART HOUSE .
Design: 1998
Construction: 1999
• On another part of Naoshima is the Art House Project.

26. • The purpose of the Art House Project is to preserve and restore the region's old traditional private houses
that could then serve as galleries for permanent exhibitions of contemporary art.
•This current project involved designing a special space for an installation of light by the American artist
James Turrell. Ando's approach involved constructing a wooden building that would be called Minami-Dera,
the name of the temple that formerly stood on the site.
“WATER ALSO CREATES PATHS”
“PATHS AN IMPORTANT THEME”

27. Internatinal Library of Children's
Literature (2002)
Naoshima Contemporary Art
Museum and Annex

28. The Hyogo Prefectural
Museum of Art in the city of
Kobe opened in 2001. The sea-facing
concrete, stone and glass
building, located in Kobe's newly
developed waterfront area, is a
symbol of recovery in a city which
was devastated by the Great
Hanshin Earthquake in 1995.
Tadao Ando's cylindrical, one-story
"Space for Contemplation" in the
UNESCO compound, is paved with
granite slabs from Hiroshima that were
irradiated during the explosion of the H-bomb
in August, 1945.

29. Tadao Ando Langen
Foundation
Neuss, Germany
Nagaragawa Convention
Center

30. “What I have sought to achieve is a spatiality that
stimulates the human spirit, awakens the
sensitivity and communicates with the deeper
soul.” – Tadao Ando
THANK YOU
(^_-)