CTroyMathis
21 December 2002, 05:55 PM
Tadao Ando
'One of the best finished buildings you can get today’
BY MICHAEL PRICE
Tadao Ando is the proverbial Man of Few Words – certainly few in English, which despite an extended tour of duty with the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has yet to become any sort of second language for him. His displays of exuberance are scarcer yet: Although he tends to tower over world architecture, his style of communication lends new meaning to the term low-key.
The celebrated architect from Osaka, Japan, prefers to let his work speak on his behalf. And so it came as quite a surprise to find Ando beaming and verbose during a preview tour of the Modern.
He likes the result – that much became clear. So did the hesitancy with which he had first approached the project, and so did his disdain, a cultural bias grounded in experience and earnest opinion, for the U.S. construction industry as a class.
Which is where the new Modern comes in as a test of the architect’s pre-disposition. Ando told an international conclave of newspaper and magazine journalists that the Modern "is one of the best finished buildings you can get today."
He spoke, rather apologetically, through an interpreter, explaining: "When I came here, I promised myself I would try to learn as much English as I could, but up to now I have not learned as much English as I could."
Ando’s reserved presence, during a painstaking three years of construction, often proved a dodgy experience for the hometown building crew of Linbeck Construction Corp., which found it necessary to learn entirely new processes for bringing Ando’s radical visions into a palpable reality. The structural-concrete requirements alone, demanding a sculpture-like quality of the interior walls in addition to their fundamental supporting function, required as much invention as application of known technologies.
"The construction standards in America are quite low by comparison with Japan," Ando declared categorically. America typically has a very casual way of working in construction – everything is more easy, and more subject to compromise." He added that colleagues in Japan had demanded of him: "How could you entrust one of your designs to American construction?"
"I trusted," Ando said. "And I demanded that certain standards be met.
"Often, a builder is merely as good as the design given to him to realize, and limited by the resources available. Even the best builders are merely as good as their plans and their ability to purchase the best materials, to apply the best technologies. So we gave the best, and we demanded the best, and we have achieved – in my opinion – one of the best results capable of being achieved."
Ando visited Fort Worth frequently to prepare for construction, and at length to observe progress, as unobtrusively as possible.
"I dislike making a spectacle, to call attention to myself," he said. "And truthfully, I do not believe in over praising anyone’s work. The opportunity to bring my vision to a place that had not seen it before was the attraction for me, and I was surprised at every stage (of construction) to find the reality to be living up to the ideas. But to speak of that prematurely could cause overconfidence."
In other words: Keep ’em guessing.
"When I entrust my drawings to the carpenters and craftsmen, I worry because I have removed myself from the actual construction," he said. "I wish I were a builder. But I keep close watch.
"Coming here today," he continued during a walk-through, "I see that I was right all along in liking what I was seeing while the construction progressed. But I had not guessed at how handsomely the collection would fit together with the building. The collection has room to breathe, and in breathing, it brings to life the building that we have made. One brings out the other.
"Today, I feel success. This is not according to me, but this is according to the sense of collaboration and the sense of standards that have been met."
Ando has worked elsewhere in the world, but he said he considers the Modern his most ambitious project outside Japan.
In prepared remarks, Ando spoke of a sense of communion between the Modern and the city at large.
"I can see our new museum becoming the heart and the nucleus of Fort Worth… a crucial part of everyone’s life," he said. "A place where people can come together – that is so important."
As to the need to integrate his design with the long-familiar work of Philip Johnson at the Amon Carter Museum and Louis I. Kahn at the Kimbell Art Museum, Ando said he sensed "a great deal of excitement to build next door to Louis Kahn, and a great responsibility to create a link to the work already present. Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum is one of the greatest designs of the last century, and Louis Kahn’s work is one of my great inspirations."
A native of Osaka, Ando, 61, is primarily an instinctive architect who as a self-taught artisan established Tadao Ando Architect & Associates in 1969. He has been a visiting professor of architecture – despite the lack of a formal degree – at Yale, Columbia and Harvard, and holds such awards of the profession as the Pritzker, the Carlsberg, the Royal Gold Medal of Great Britain and the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects. Ando’s exhibitions have graced New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Paris’ Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among any number of other showcases.
Ando’s trademark, particularly evident at Fort Worth’s new Modern, is a formidable definition of space with reinforced concrete that allows the flow of light and air to course through any setting.
"Light is an important factor," Ando said. "I confine spaces with dense concrete, and then I open them up with light and air. The objective is (to allow) a place for the individual, a zone for oneself within society. When external factors require walls, then the interiors must be full and satisfying."
Ando has written extensively on the matter of walls. One such manifesto, idiomatically translated into English, reads: "Walls can manifest a power that borders on violence. They have power to divide space, transform place, to create new domains. Walls are the most basic elements of architecture, but they can also be the most enriching.
"Such values as lighting and wind currents develop meaning only when they are introduced inside a space in forms cut off from the outside world. I create architectural order from a basis of geometry: squares, circles, triangles and rectangles. I try to use natural forces in the area where I am building, to restore the unity between house and nature… that was lost in the process of modernizing Japanese houses during the rapid growth of the 1950s and ’60s."
As a child, Ando has recalled, he spent his time "mostly in the fields and in the streets." His teenage years, he devoted to learning craft-modeling and molding from a neighbor who happened to be a carpenter. He tried prizefighting as a career at one point. Then he began a more urgent process of self-invention by attaching himself as a volunteer apprentice to building designers and urban planners.
"I was never a good student," Ando said. "And I still now prefer learning on my own. I studied architecture by going to see actual architecture – temples, shrines, tea houses – and by making visits to study the built world of the United States and Europe. Reading books is good, but seeing the world is the true education. I make my own books, keep a sketchbook, wherever I go."
Ando’s preference for concrete is quite alien to traditional Japanese building methods.
"Japanese houses are mostly built of wood and paper, my own included," he said. "I have lived there since I was a child."
He cites among his influences such historically significant architects and designers as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn. At 17, Ando recalled, he visited a Wright building: "I had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright, but the architecture fascinated me – dark and narrow, like a cave, but with a connection to nature. I think Frank Lloyd Wright must have absorbed from Japanese architecture the treatment of space."
Ando’s work first began calling a more widespread attention in 1975 with the completion of an unassuming, but pivotal work known as Row House, Sumiyoshi, in Osaka.
"This small house was an arrival for me," he said. "This house replaced a middle portion of three row houses in an older part of Osaka. The house completely closes itself from the street except for an indentation on the front to serve as its entry, with a courtyard as its center." Comparable qualities might be perceived in the grander scale of the Modern.
Ando’s first assignment outside Japan was the development of a school in Italy. He also has designed a teaching forum for a manufacturer of furniture in Germany. Thirteen of his projects have been completed since 1997, most of them in Japan. Other recent works include the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, and the Armani Teatro in Milan, Italy.
Ando characterizes himself as "a frustrated carpenter." He explains: "I do enjoy making things with my own hands. But I cannot build a house by myself. So I draw. And I trust."
'One of the best finished buildings you can get today’
BY MICHAEL PRICE
Tadao Ando is the proverbial Man of Few Words – certainly few in English, which despite an extended tour of duty with the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has yet to become any sort of second language for him. His displays of exuberance are scarcer yet: Although he tends to tower over world architecture, his style of communication lends new meaning to the term low-key.
The celebrated architect from Osaka, Japan, prefers to let his work speak on his behalf. And so it came as quite a surprise to find Ando beaming and verbose during a preview tour of the Modern.
He likes the result – that much became clear. So did the hesitancy with which he had first approached the project, and so did his disdain, a cultural bias grounded in experience and earnest opinion, for the U.S. construction industry as a class.
Which is where the new Modern comes in as a test of the architect’s pre-disposition. Ando told an international conclave of newspaper and magazine journalists that the Modern "is one of the best finished buildings you can get today."
He spoke, rather apologetically, through an interpreter, explaining: "When I came here, I promised myself I would try to learn as much English as I could, but up to now I have not learned as much English as I could."
Ando’s reserved presence, during a painstaking three years of construction, often proved a dodgy experience for the hometown building crew of Linbeck Construction Corp., which found it necessary to learn entirely new processes for bringing Ando’s radical visions into a palpable reality. The structural-concrete requirements alone, demanding a sculpture-like quality of the interior walls in addition to their fundamental supporting function, required as much invention as application of known technologies.
"The construction standards in America are quite low by comparison with Japan," Ando declared categorically. America typically has a very casual way of working in construction – everything is more easy, and more subject to compromise." He added that colleagues in Japan had demanded of him: "How could you entrust one of your designs to American construction?"
"I trusted," Ando said. "And I demanded that certain standards be met.
"Often, a builder is merely as good as the design given to him to realize, and limited by the resources available. Even the best builders are merely as good as their plans and their ability to purchase the best materials, to apply the best technologies. So we gave the best, and we demanded the best, and we have achieved – in my opinion – one of the best results capable of being achieved."
Ando visited Fort Worth frequently to prepare for construction, and at length to observe progress, as unobtrusively as possible.
"I dislike making a spectacle, to call attention to myself," he said. "And truthfully, I do not believe in over praising anyone’s work. The opportunity to bring my vision to a place that had not seen it before was the attraction for me, and I was surprised at every stage (of construction) to find the reality to be living up to the ideas. But to speak of that prematurely could cause overconfidence."
In other words: Keep ’em guessing.
"When I entrust my drawings to the carpenters and craftsmen, I worry because I have removed myself from the actual construction," he said. "I wish I were a builder. But I keep close watch.
"Coming here today," he continued during a walk-through, "I see that I was right all along in liking what I was seeing while the construction progressed. But I had not guessed at how handsomely the collection would fit together with the building. The collection has room to breathe, and in breathing, it brings to life the building that we have made. One brings out the other.
"Today, I feel success. This is not according to me, but this is according to the sense of collaboration and the sense of standards that have been met."
Ando has worked elsewhere in the world, but he said he considers the Modern his most ambitious project outside Japan.
In prepared remarks, Ando spoke of a sense of communion between the Modern and the city at large.
"I can see our new museum becoming the heart and the nucleus of Fort Worth… a crucial part of everyone’s life," he said. "A place where people can come together – that is so important."
As to the need to integrate his design with the long-familiar work of Philip Johnson at the Amon Carter Museum and Louis I. Kahn at the Kimbell Art Museum, Ando said he sensed "a great deal of excitement to build next door to Louis Kahn, and a great responsibility to create a link to the work already present. Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum is one of the greatest designs of the last century, and Louis Kahn’s work is one of my great inspirations."
A native of Osaka, Ando, 61, is primarily an instinctive architect who as a self-taught artisan established Tadao Ando Architect & Associates in 1969. He has been a visiting professor of architecture – despite the lack of a formal degree – at Yale, Columbia and Harvard, and holds such awards of the profession as the Pritzker, the Carlsberg, the Royal Gold Medal of Great Britain and the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects. Ando’s exhibitions have graced New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Paris’ Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among any number of other showcases.
Ando’s trademark, particularly evident at Fort Worth’s new Modern, is a formidable definition of space with reinforced concrete that allows the flow of light and air to course through any setting.
"Light is an important factor," Ando said. "I confine spaces with dense concrete, and then I open them up with light and air. The objective is (to allow) a place for the individual, a zone for oneself within society. When external factors require walls, then the interiors must be full and satisfying."
Ando has written extensively on the matter of walls. One such manifesto, idiomatically translated into English, reads: "Walls can manifest a power that borders on violence. They have power to divide space, transform place, to create new domains. Walls are the most basic elements of architecture, but they can also be the most enriching.
"Such values as lighting and wind currents develop meaning only when they are introduced inside a space in forms cut off from the outside world. I create architectural order from a basis of geometry: squares, circles, triangles and rectangles. I try to use natural forces in the area where I am building, to restore the unity between house and nature… that was lost in the process of modernizing Japanese houses during the rapid growth of the 1950s and ’60s."
As a child, Ando has recalled, he spent his time "mostly in the fields and in the streets." His teenage years, he devoted to learning craft-modeling and molding from a neighbor who happened to be a carpenter. He tried prizefighting as a career at one point. Then he began a more urgent process of self-invention by attaching himself as a volunteer apprentice to building designers and urban planners.
"I was never a good student," Ando said. "And I still now prefer learning on my own. I studied architecture by going to see actual architecture – temples, shrines, tea houses – and by making visits to study the built world of the United States and Europe. Reading books is good, but seeing the world is the true education. I make my own books, keep a sketchbook, wherever I go."
Ando’s preference for concrete is quite alien to traditional Japanese building methods.
"Japanese houses are mostly built of wood and paper, my own included," he said. "I have lived there since I was a child."
He cites among his influences such historically significant architects and designers as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn. At 17, Ando recalled, he visited a Wright building: "I had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright, but the architecture fascinated me – dark and narrow, like a cave, but with a connection to nature. I think Frank Lloyd Wright must have absorbed from Japanese architecture the treatment of space."
Ando’s work first began calling a more widespread attention in 1975 with the completion of an unassuming, but pivotal work known as Row House, Sumiyoshi, in Osaka.
"This small house was an arrival for me," he said. "This house replaced a middle portion of three row houses in an older part of Osaka. The house completely closes itself from the street except for an indentation on the front to serve as its entry, with a courtyard as its center." Comparable qualities might be perceived in the grander scale of the Modern.
Ando’s first assignment outside Japan was the development of a school in Italy. He also has designed a teaching forum for a manufacturer of furniture in Germany. Thirteen of his projects have been completed since 1997, most of them in Japan. Other recent works include the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, and the Armani Teatro in Milan, Italy.
Ando characterizes himself as "a frustrated carpenter." He explains: "I do enjoy making things with my own hands. But I cannot build a house by myself. So I draw. And I trust."