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TADAO ANDO

Munch Stenersen Competition

Oslo, Norway

Firms PresentationOctober 29, 2008


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Tadao Ando Architect & Associates Page 2 of 6

Contents

1. Tadao Andos Biography2. Representative Museum ProjectsModern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Pulitzer Foundation for the ArtsSuntory Museum


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1. Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando was born in 1941 in Osaka, Japan.In the sixties, after a brief career as a professional boxer, Ando decided to embark on his own self-education journey as an architectby visiting the great buildings of the West. This trip was also to him a journey into himself, driving him to contemplate the Japanese

traditional roots of architecture in connection to the rising modern architectural movements. As a result of this journey, he cameback to Japan and promptly established his own office in 1969.

Lauded as that rare architect who combines artistic and intellectual sensitivity in a single individual, capable of producing buildings,large and small, that both serve and inspire Ando humbly credits this to his cultural root in the west of J apan, the area around Nara,Kyoto and Osaka, home to some of the finest examples of traditional Japanese architecture. His visits to the temples, shrines andgardens in these places from an early age gave him a real-life lesson of architecture which in turn led him to study publishedarchitecture. His journey through architectural literature led him to a book about Le Corbusier, which required several weeks of hissavings to acquire, during that time of J apans economic hardship. Ando would endlessly trace the drawings, trying to understandthe concepts behind the designs, imagining how Le Corbusier might have thought about this project or that, or even what he himselfwould do for such a project.

His first attempts are small houses as well as urban planning projects that well manifested his hope to improve the living conditionsin the Japanese city. Row-house in Sumiyoshi is arguably a powerful message to raise social awareness of urban living with nature.By 1976, Tadao Ando had sufficiently captured the interest of the architectural community to earn him the Prize for Architecture fromthe Japanese Architectural Association.

Since that time, Ando has continued to receive recognition for his ever-growing body of work. His awards include virtually everyaward Japan can bestow for architecture and the arts, as well as major international prizes such as the Pritzker Architecture Prize,the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, Denmarks Carlsberg Architectural Prize, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal of Architecture from the French Academy of Architecture, the Gold Medal for theAmerican Institute of Architects and the Gold Medal of Union Internationale des Architectes.

Admired and respected by colleagues around the world, Tadao Ando has been designated an Honorary Fellow by the architecturalassociations of Great Britain, Germany, France, Scotland, the Republic of China, as well as the American Institute of Architects.

Since 1987, Ando has served as a visiting professor at Yale University, Columbia University, and Harvard and after serving asProfessor for several years at Tokyo University he now holds the chair of a Special University Emeritus Professor. He has alsolectured regularly at Princeton, MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, Rice University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Numerous monographs have been published since 1987 documenting the work of Tadao Ando. His work has been the focus ofnumerous exhibitions, including the critically acclaimed exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1991, at the CentreGeorges Pompidou in 1992 and most recently at Shanghai Art Museum in 2005-2006 in China and at 21_21_DESIGN SIGHT inTokyo in 2007.

Ando lives and works in Osaka and besides his woks in Japan he has increasingly been working on numerous projects all over theworld.


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2. Representative Museum ProjectsModern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas - USA


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Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis - USA


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Suntory Museum, Osaka - J apan

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