Tadao Ando: Endeavors

by Tadao Andō

This comprehensive monograph on Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando covers the span of his impressive career, with previously unpublished material and insight into his sources of inspiration.

This in-depth monograph offers insight into Tadao Ando's sober and elegant architecture through photographs, architectural drawings, and descriptions of eighty of his most significant works. His notable works span the London's Tate Modern; St. Louis's Pulitzer Arts Foundation; Osaka's Church of the Light; Paris's UNESCO Meditation Space; Venice's Palazzo Grassi; Abu Dhabi's Maritime Museum; and exceptional buildings in South Korea, Taiwan, China, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Germany, and throughout the United States. Japanese design principles--from the use of concrete, simple geometric volumes, and the integration of natural elements such as light or water--are essential elements that Ando uses to provoke a physical experience through his architecture.

An interview with the architect accompanies his own writings and critical essays on various aspects of his work. A portfolio of Ando's black-and-white photographs and colored-pencil drawings from his previously unpublished travel notebooks provide new insight into his sources of inspiration. The book is completed with a biography and a chronology of his works to date, including some unrealized projects.

Genres: Architecture

319 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 2017

About the author

Tadao Ando is a Japanese self-taught architect. Tadao Ando's body of work is known for the creative use of natural light and for structures that follow natural forms of the landscape, rather than disturbing the landscape by making it conform to the constructed space of a building. Ando's buildings are often characterized by complex three-dimensional circulation paths. These paths interweave between interior and exterior spaces formed both inside large-scale geometric shapes and in the spaces between them.