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Tadao
Ando 1: Houses and Housing, by Tadao Ando.
Looking for Tadao Ando books at Prairie Avenue Bookshop
yields 23
titles, four more than today's most celebrated and well-known
architect, Frank
Gehry. Not only are Ando's buildings amazingly photogenic,
and not only is his production prolific enough to warrant
almost continuous publication by various publishers, but
his buildings are the type that make other architects drool.
They make other architects jealous of his skill, gained
not by professional training but by travel and exposure
to places and buildings. It's as if books on Ando can provide
a secret to his magic, making the purchase of them hard
to resist for architects who want to capture light as well
as him, or shape and finish concrete in a way that elevates
the material to its utmost, or make a wall so appealing
the owner can't bear to hang a painting on it. Like other
books
on Ando, this book (the first in a series published by Toto
on and by the architect himself) won't provide the answers,
but the text by Ando that accompanies the requisite photographs
and drawings gives a glimpse into the architect's mind that
others will appreciate.
The narrow focus on houses on housing helps the book considerably,
allowing Ando's text (for each project but also including
a brief biography and an interview with the client of his
4x4 House
in Osaka) to be equally focused, and giving the remaining
books in the series room for additional insight. Residential
commissions are some of the architect's most well-known,
from his early Rowhouse
in Sumiyoshi to the aforementioned 4x4 House. In between
is a consistent output with surprising variety within Ando's
tried-and-true formula of concrete and glass, with a little
steel thrown in here and there. Like his religious commissions,
houses give the architect a small palette to attempt new
solutions, in this case for dwelling both individually and
in multi-family housing. In this book the latter is devoted
to his Rokko
Housing, a three-phase development on a steep slope
in Kobe. Here, as in many of Ando's other large-scale works,
we yearn for the qualities of the small projects, the intimate
play of light on his signature concrete, and the tactility
of the same. That even Ando cannot capture the "magic"
on every project should be some sort of consolation to those
architects buying and reading his books.
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