This comprehensive monograph on Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando covers the span of his impressive career, with previously unpublished material and insight into his sources of inspiration.

This in-depth monograph offers insight into Tadao Ando's sober and elegant architecture through photographs, architectural drawings, and descriptions of eighty of his most significant works. His notable works span the globe: London's Tate Modern; St. Louis's Pulitzer Arts Foundation; Osaka's Church of the Light; Paris's UNESCO Meditation Space; Venice's Palazzo Grassi; Abu Dhabi's Maritime Museum; and exceptional buildings in South Korea, Taiwan, China, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Germany, and throughout the United States. Japanese design principles--from the use of concrete, simple geometric volumes, and the integration of natural elements such as light or water--are essential elements that Ando uses to provoke a physical experience through his architecture.

An interview with the architect accompanies his own writings and critical essays on various aspects of his work. A portfolio of Ando's black-and-white photographs and colored-pencil drawings from his previously unpublished travel notebooks provide new insight into his sources of inspiration. The book is completed with a biography and a chronology of his works to date, including some unrealized projects.

About The Author

Tadao Ando, a Pritzker Architecture Prize winner, is one of the most important contemporary architects working today. Frédéric Migayrou is a deputy director at the Centre Pompidou Paris. He is Chair and professor of architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture. He founded the Frac Center Collection and ArchiLab. He has curated exhibitions for the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and the 21st Century Museum of Art and has contributed to many exhibition catalogues. Serge Lavisgnes is president of the Centre Pompidou. Bernard Blistène is a director at the Centre Pompidou. Masao Furuyama is vice president and professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology; he has published extensively on architecture and on Tadao Ando. Asira Asada is a Japanese postmodern critic and curator specialized in contemporary art, the history of social thought, and economic philosophy. He is dean of the Graduate School at the Kyoto University of Art and Design and former associate professor of economics at the Institute of Economic Research at Kyoto University. Riichi Miyake is professor at Fuji Women's University in Sapporo and previously taught at Shibaura Institute of Technology, Université de Liège, Keio University, and Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. He has written and contributed to many books on Japanese architects.