Architect Day: Tadao Ando. He was a truck driver and boxer, he taught himself architecture as he didn't like school and preferred to study his way, visiting and analyzing the works. Tadao Ando has consolidated his name by performing an architecture that's pure, allowing the user to experience space and nature in his works. Tadao Ando was born in Osaka, Japan, on September 13, 1941 and was raised by his grandmother. At 10 to 17 years of age, he worked with a local carpenter where he learned to work with wood, building model airplanes and ships.
School-wise, Tadao chose his own method of learning, outside the classroom through visits to buildings in the region and always with a lot of reading about architecture. He studied architecture at his own pace and also visited other customs, cultures and buildings in Europe and North America. “I was never a good student.
I always preferred learning things on my own outside of class. Influences Works Azuma House, Osaka, Japan Rokko Residential Conjunction, Kobe, Japan. Kengo Kuma: "Anti-Object" AD Classics: Church on the Water / Tadao Ando. “You cannot simply put something new into a place. You have to absorb what you see around you, what exists on the land, and then use that knowledge along with contemporary thinking to interpret what you see.” This philosophy of Tadao Ando is ever apparent in his design, as he is celebrated for the attention he pays to nature and the relationship between interior and exterior spaces of his buildings.
More on Tadao Ando‘s Church on the Water after the break. Found sloping down towards a small river in a clearing of beech trees, the element of nature apparent in all the architecture of Tadao Ando initiates subliminal experiences in this Church on the Water in Tomamu, Japan. To the west, the church is surrounded by hills and trees, and a resort hotel lies to the east. The church, with a form of two overlapping cubes, faces a large pond which steps down towards the small natural river. Tadao Ando 안도 다다오 타다오:: photographs by Sanghyun Lee 이상현. 安藤忠雄 Tadao Ando. Cit.