Tadao Ando: There

Tadao Ando is one of my favorite present day architects. My love began with a visit to the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, Missouri, his first public building in the United States. Though my trip to Japan was short and unplanned, I did seek out a few of his projects in his native country. Architecture Week has called his buildings "a continuous play of light on concrete" and he is noted for his attention for materiality, particularly concrete.

21-21 Design Site, Tokyo, 2007.

Exterior view of sunken, 2 story gallery space.

Passage in the middle of the building frames the view of the modern Midtown Development to the West.

Roof and wall in one: drainage channels built into smooth metal roof.
View of gallery and gift shop areas, where the wall and the roof are one in the same.

Curtain wall reflection against Ando's signature concrete wall.

Times Gallery, 1991, Kyoto, Japan. High-end shops and salons arranged artfully on a compact city lot.

View from main entry, city waterway to the left and businesses on the right.
View from Main Street. (Click on photo for credit)
Covered public walkway.

Doors of the East

In a country where space is scarce, and facade space in particular, the door is sometimes the only chance to make an impression. Also, private life in Japan is kept behind said closed doors. In the compact city of Tokyo, wood screens are closed, shoji screens are translucent, and the living space happens on the second floor.

Houses are crammed into the city side by side, and much like the American town home, the front door and space for the car are the only thing on the first floor, usually on a zero lot line, the front door almost directly off of the sidewalk. The front door then becomes an important expression of style to the outside world, the literal and figurative threshold between the very public and very private worlds.



Doors are unique in commercial spaces too, where very small businesses and storefronts have sliding doors to conserve space.