Tadao Ando : Attraction of Manchester

Tadao Ando (Ando Tadao, born September 13, 1941 in Osaka, Japan) is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture is sometimes categorised as Critical Regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as truck driver and boxer before settling on the profession of architecture without having taken formal training.

He works primarily in exposed cast-in-place concrete and is renowned for an exemplary craftsmanship which invokes a Japanese sense of materiality, junction and spatial narrative through the pared aesthetics of international modernism. His buildings are often characterized by complex three-dimensional circulation paths. These paths interweave between interior and exterior spaces formed both within large-scale geometric shapes and in the spaces between them.

In 1969, he established the firm Tadao Ando Architects & Associates.

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 solid 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.

In 1995, Ando won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize medallion. He donated the $100,000 prize money to the orphans of the 1995 Kobe earthquake.