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Seven Interviews with Tadao Ando,
by Michael Auping.
Auping - the chief curator at the Modern Art Museum of
Fort Worth - spoke with the architect of the institution's
new home on seven occasions, when Ando was in town for design
meetings and later construction visits. Given Auping's role
and his relative lack of experience about architecture and
its history, his questions tend to be specifically about
the museum in Texas or generally about architecture and
Ando's life. This leads to the reader learning a great deal
about Ando and his views on architecture. His atypical education
(once a semi-professional boxer, he travelled to Europe
and other parts of Asia in lieu of a standard architectural
education) tempers most of his thinking on architecture
and space, informing it primarily as an experiential practice
over a theoretical one.
The reader sees how Ando's home country of Japan also informs
much of his architecture, even when it is built on another
continent. In the case of the Modern, he has created a variation
on the traditional engawa (narrow transitional
space between inside and outside) in the interaction of
glass and the ever-present concrete. But more than facts
or points-of-view, this book is valuable for the a peek
into the mind of an architect who creates buildings of a
transcendental nature, uplifting us to the possibilities
of architecture as a means to "create a dialogue between
diverse cultures, histories, and values," in the words
of Ando.
. . or . . 
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