“I was never a good student. I always preferred learning things on my own outside of class. When I was about 18, I started to visit temples, shrines and tea houses in Kyoto and nara; There’s a lot of great traditional architecture in the area. I was studying architecture by going to see actual building, and reading books about them.”
Inspired by Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright & Louis Kahn, Tadao Ando spent the years between 1962 and 1969 travelling Europe, Africa and the US studying and sketching buildings, but returned to his native Japan where he began applying his self taught methods to building designs of his own, founding Tadao Ando Architectural & Associates in Osaka in 1969.
"Aesthetics also include things like a sense of responsibility and a sense of justice. They also incorporate a respect for other people and for nature, an appreciation of the gift of life, and courtesy. They even extend to the ability to look at the world around one, properly." A message from Ando.
Images from Figure Ground and all over.
