The Tadao touch: Ando's complete works to date

"In architecture, there is a part that is the result of logical reasoning and a part that is created through the senses. There is always a point where they clash. I don't think architecture can be created without that collision." - Tadao Ando

Philippe Starck describes him as a "mystic in a country which is no longer mystic." Philip Drew calls his buildings "land art" that "struggle to emerge from the earth." He is the only architect to have won the discipline's four most prestigious prizes: the Pritzker, Carlsberg, Praemium Imperiale, and Kyoto Prize.

His name is Tadao Ando, and he is the world's greatest living architect. Combining influences from Japanese tradition with the best of Modernism, Ando has developed a completely unique building aesthetic that makes use of concrete, wood, water, light, space, and nature in a way that has never been witnessed in architecture. Ando has designed award-winning private homes, churches, museums, apartment complexes, and cultural spaces throughout Japan, as well as in France, Italy, Spain, and the USA. This book, created at the height of Ando's illustrious career, presents his complete works to date.

Tadao Ando is the most revered Japanese architect at work today. Beloved and admired for his powerful, meditative spaces and his sensual and yet refined use of the materials of the modern trade-wood, steel, concrete, glass-Ando's work resonates with profound intelligence, unpretentious elegance, and an almost palpable sense of harmony. Tadao Ando at Naoshima: Art, Architecture, Nature showcases the latest work in an on going process of building by Tadao Ando at the acclaimed Naoshima Island Art Complex. Featured here is Ando's recently completed Chichu Art Museum, an underground facility built on the small island in the Inland Sea of Japan. With respect for the landscape and the traditional use of the land as terraced salt fields, Ando adapted the architecture to the topography, by burying much of the complex volume below the ground. Ando's Naoshima is a stunning demonstration of architectural virtuosity.