Tadao Ando : The Colours of Light

Tadao Ando : The Colours of Light

Tadao Ando: the Colours of light is a landmark in architectural publishing. An exquisite work of art in its own right, it is the result of ten years' collaboration between the English photographer Richard Pare and the internationally renowned architect Tadao Ando. Japan's leading architect, Tadao Ando (b 1941) was recently awarded the 1995 Pritzker Architecture Prize for his 'consistent and significant contributions to the built environment'. This book includes twenty-seven of Ando's buildings, completed over the last decade, including such notable projects as the Kidosaki House, Tokyo, 1986, the Church on the Water, Hokkaido, 1988, the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum and Annexe, 1992 and 1995, and the recently completed buildings for Benetton in Treviso, Italy, 1995, and the Meditation Space for Unesco, Paris, 1995. Richard Pare's images break with previous conventions of architectural representation; they convey his interest in distilling the 'essence' of Tadao Ando's buildings rather than producing literal portraits. Pare concentrates on the subtle effects that natural light has on architecture; working without the aid of artificial effects he captures as directly as possible the colour and atmosphere of Ando's spaces. Tadao Ando, one-time truck driver and boxer, is a self-taught Japanese architect whose winning of the 1995 Pritzker Prize has given him preeminence among his gifted generation. Ando reinvents Japan's architectural tradition in contemporary terms, using minimalist concrete structures of monumental scale, reminiscent of the Brutalist architecture of America's Louis Kahn. Almost all of Ando's works are in Japan, many in his native Osaka. Richard Pare's photographs of Ando's buildings, lovingly reproduced here, have drawn praise from Ando himself, who describes them as having "a phantasmic beauty beyond real time." Dramatically understated and immaculately detailed, Ando's architecture interweaves concrete and glass as primary materials and stone, wood, and steel as secondary materials, resulting in Zen understatement, cool elegance, and aesthetic purity. This volume is an apt representation of Ando's work. Pare's photographs describe and reveal the architecture with a level of detail often unseen in architectural photography. A highly informative and thorough introductory essay by architect Tom Heneghan is interspersed with pencil sketches printed on translucent Japanese paper. An appendix describing major projects mixes black-and-white photographs, plans, sections, and elevations with data on building area, structural materials, and construction dates. This material would serve better had it been integrated with Pare's photographs, and an index would have helped. Still, students of modern architecture will delight in Pare's unparalleled portrait of Ando's work.?Paul Glassman, Pratt Inst. Lib., Brooklyn Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. ... the magnificent photographs ... come as close to putting you there as any publication is likely to achieve ... poetic images. -- The New York Times Book Review, Martin Filler Used Book in Good Condition