There probably won’t be many architects with bright red boxing gloves hanging on the wall of their office. But there are probably even fewer who are missing five organs and who can even see something positive out of them. There is probably only one person in the whole world: Tadao Ando. The Japanese architect only terrified the author of these lines when he told her in a conversation in Osaka that he was missing the gallbladder, bile duct, pancreas, spleen and duodenum due to cancer. And then caused astonishment by explaining why this fact was not only bad: “My missing organs are the reason why some clients say: I want Tadao Ando and no other. Ando lacks five organs, and he can still work . “
Tadao Ando, who turns 80 this Monday – and is still working – is a fighter. He was from the start. In fact, he started his career as a professional boxer. “I thought it was funny that you should get money for fighting too.” His struggle for recognition might have been less amusing. Ando grew up with his grandmother, where there should have been “nothing to do with culture”. No literature, no art book and certainly no mentor who would have strengthened the young Ando in his interests. According to Ando, this was taken over by a book with sketches by Le Corbusier, in which the then 15-year-old recognized the sculptural power of architecture for the first time.
Tadao Ando converted the former customs post Punta della Dogana into a contemporary art museum for the private collector François Pinault.
(Photo: Garry Ridsdale; imago images)
The Japanese architect shares with the French master the habit of developing all of his buildings according to a certain scale. But what the “Modulor” was for Le Corbusier is the tatami mat for Ando, a mat made of rice straw that is exactly ninety by 180 centimeters in size and which is used as a floor in traditional Japanese houses. For the trained carpenter who has never studied architecture, the tatami mat brings the human scale into his buildings. Ando repeatedly takes up influences from traditional Japanese architecture and brings them into his own present.
Also for François Pinault, Tadao Ando converted the 250-year-old Bourse de Commerce in Paris into an art museum.
(Photo: Vincent Isore; imago images)
The Pritzker Prize winner shares something else with Le Corbusier, whom Ando admired so much that he even gave his dog the nickname of the architect – Corbu -: his passion for concrete. For Ando the material that can be brought into any shape and that gives him the freedom to “do anything”.
All of this now includes over 200 buildings, mostly museums, but also residential buildings, offices, shopping malls and schools. Each one consists of seemingly soft exposed concrete with the small round holes in the formwork walls, which at Ando are always so precise that they have long been his trademark. Also typical for him: his handling of light. As if with a razor, he cuts the incidence of sunlight into his building, above all in his masterpiece, the “Church of Light” from 1989, where this alone allows spirituality to move into the house of God.
One of his smaller projects, but perhaps also one of his best: the stone sculpture museum in Bad Münster am Stein, where works by the artist couple Kubach-Wilmsen are shown.
(Photo: Fredrik Von Erichsen; dpa)
As impressive as Tadao Ando’s architecture is, it also reaches a limit with him. The building material concrete, with its fatal climate footprint, has long since lost its innocence. Not infrequently, Ando’s designs are more gigantic sculptures than real utility buildings – no wonder that private collectors with the necessary budget favor him as their museum builder. There is hardly a larger city in Japan today that does not have an Ando building. The public sector has been feeding the ailing economy with construction contracts for years. Concrete is known as the country’s heroin. So, if you will, Tadao Ando is also Japan’s best dealer.