The Chichu Art Museum: Tadao Ando Builds For Claude Monet, Walter De Maria And James Turrell

by Tadao Andō

On the island of Naoshima off the picturesque coast of western Japan, Japanese architect Tadao Ando has built a spectacular structure comprised of basic geometric forms. Situated on cliffs overlooking the straits of Seto-Naikai, the building provides a congenial setting for the presentation of numerous undisputed masterpieces of artistic reduction, including several of Claude Monet's incomparable Water Lilies , monumental sculptures by Walter de Maria, and meditative light installations by James Turrell. Here, on the island of Naoshima off the picturesque coast of western Japan, the heirs of the publisher Fukutake have realizing posthumously his lifelong dream of an expansive museum environment, a private estate filled with sculptures, installations, Land Art and artists' houses.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 2005

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.