TADAO ANDO – MASTER OF LIGHT

1995, Pritzker prize winner, TADAO ANDO.

One whose complex choreography of light fascinates viewers. Japanese self taught Architect educate himself by attending night classes to learn drawing and took correspondence courses on interior design. Working as a boxer and struck by F.L.Wright designed building Imperial Hotel. Ando’s approach was more practical, he visited buildings designed by renowned architects like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, F.L.Wright and Louis Kahn.

“It wasn’t that I had great dream of being an Architect. I just wanted to make things, whether it was Furniture, painting, Interior design or Architecture. I just wanted to create something. – TADAO ANDO”

The idea of Japanese Architecture deals in “elimination of inessentials, & seek the beauty in humble things. It sought spaciousness in deliberately small spacing, Harmony with nature, Lightness in design form and space for many reason, firstly, usage of space at particular hour secondly, frequent earthquakes.”

Ando’s style has simplicity, and also a strong effect. It create a “HAIKU EFFECT”, emphasizing nothingness and empty space to represent the beauty of simplicity. Ando perfection in on the characteristic design feature of bare concrete walls, Ando’s walls are renowned for their smoothness, an effect he achieves by varnishing the formwork before pouring the concrete. As an architect, he believes that architecture can change society, that “to change the dwelling is to change the city and to reform society”. Simple geometric forms that contrast with complex 3-dimensional circulation. He has explained his method by saying: “When I design buildings, I think of the overall composition, much as the parts of a body would fit together. On top of that, I think about how people will approach the building and experience that space… If you give people nothingness, they can ponder what can be achieved from that nothingness.”

Ando’s elegant slits between wall and ceiling generate a poetic rhythm of light during the course of the day. Mainly restrained as a channel for diffuse daylight, they break the concrete surfaces and separate vertical from horizontal, intensifying the spatial depth. A moment of crescendo is short but intense. It emerges when the rays of sunlight run very close along the wall and produce a layer of striking shadows.

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 Church of the Light in Ibaraki, Osaka (1989)

This chapel is a freestanding annex to an existing church and vicarage in a quiet residential suburb of Osaka. It consists of a rectangular concrete volume (a triple cube), penetrated at two points by an obliquely-angled freestanding wall that divides the space into the chapel and a small triangular entry space. Glazed openings at the points of intersection — approximately the mid-point of the side wall and at the end wall nearest the entry — provide light for the otherwise dark interior. Inside, the tall narrow space slopes downward to the altar at the south end. The entire height and width of the wall behind the altar is penetrated by horizontal and vertical glazed openings that form a cross. The glowing light of the large cross creates a powerful image facing the seated worshippers. The floor and benches, made of the rough wood planks used for the scaffolding, complement and contrast with the cast-concrete walls.

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Church & Theatre on the Water in Hokkaido (1985)

Located on a plain in the Yubari Mountains in Hokkaido, this church is part of a year-round resort. The structure consists (in plan) of two overlapping squares: the larger, partly projecting out into an artificial pond, houses the chapel, and the smaller contains the entry and the changing and waiting rooms. A freestanding L-shaped wall wraps around the back of the building and one side of the pond. The church is approached from the back, and entry involves a circuitous route: a counter-clockwise ascent to the top of the smaller volume through a
glass-enclosed space open to the sky, with views of the pond and the distant mountains. In this space are four large concrete crosses arranged in a square formation and almost touching. From this point, the visitor descends two levels to emerge at the back of the chapel. The wall behind the altar is constructed entirely of glass, affording a dramatic panorama of the pond with a large cross set into the water. The glass wall itself, spanned by a cruciform mullion, can slide to
the side, like a giant shoji screen, opening the chapel toward nature.

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