Ando: A Japanese Architect

Tadao Ando is one of Japan's best-known architects, and a native son of Osaka.  Ando's work is executed primarily in concrete, enlivened by a deep understanding of how light plays within a building.  In Ando's words: "Light gives objects existence as objects and connects space and form.  A beam of light isolated within architectural space lingers on the surfaces of objects and evokes shadows from the background.  As light varies in intensity with the shifting of time and changes of season, the appearances of objects are altered..."

Ando received the Pritzker Prize (architecture's version of the Nobel) in 1995.  Among his recent projects is the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, Texas.  Some of Ando's most successful projects have been religious buildings, figural "vessels for light" designed with a purity of form that alludes to their spiritual significance.