Ando: Architect - Hardcover

A close acquaintance of the architect Tadao Ando sets his work in perspective by examining his initial intentions, meditations at the time of creation, and personal philosophy.

Tadao Ando is Japan's leading architect, his reputation as illustrious abroad as in his own country. He has won awards from the Japanese Institute of Architecture, the Association of Finnish Architects, the Japanese Ministry of Education, the French Academy of Architecture, the Association of American Architects, and other institutions. In 1995 he received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the most prestigious international award for architectural distinction. He has been named an honorary professor at Yale, Columbia, and Harvard Universities. Anyone familiar with contemporary architecture has heard his name.

Kazukiyo Matsuba has followed Ando's career for some twenty years. Here he undertakes a kind of odyssey, moving from place to place to see Ando's work with his own eyes, evaluating, appraising it in terms of Ando's thoughts and ideals, and placing it in perspective from the specific to the general, from the abstract to the concrete. His description of Ando's work brings out dimensions of the architect that no student would want to miss.