ARCHITECTURE

A STRANGE VISION OF ARCHITECTURE

Tadao Ando's journey from the boxing ring to master builder

By Richard Cho

And they ran out of money for this 

“Creation of space in architecture is simply the condensation and purification of the power of light.”  Tadao Ando

The architect Tadao Ando's work is shocking in the emotions it brings out in people. The raw yet unobtrusive beauty of exposed concrete and geometric spatial composition is so simple and direct that the effect is overwhelming. Every element of the world seems in harmony, which sounds easy but isn't. Take something as fundamental as light. We're used to architects who light up their building for dramatic effect, but Ando's work doesn't need such false theatrics. He uses natural light to highlight his buildings as if they are changing along with the world. And in a way they are.

The key idea here is that there is almost no distinction between Ando's vision and the natural world. He seeks harmony with everything around his buildings, and that is what gives them such force and balance. I want to look at two pieces: one built under severe economic conditions and the other with almost unlimited funds and show how Ando's approach to his work is always the same — a severe dedication to reconciling the built world with the natural one.

But before I begin, we're going to take a small digression. I'm going to tell you a few stories about Ando that might explain how he came to his unique aesthetics and unbending will.

Story # 1: A Kind of Twin

Could there actually be two of them

Ando was born on September 13, 1941, in Osaka, Japan, one of two twin boys. It wasn’t exactly a great moment for a kid to be born in Japan with the war, its defeat, and a difficult reconstruction. Let's just say his parents and the country had a few things on their minds about how the world should be. At the age of two, Ando was separated from his twin brother and raised by his grandmother. In Japan, married women take their husbands' last name, but since Ando's mother was an only child, she wanted one of her children to carry her family's name. As a result, Ando took his father's last name "Ando," and his twin brother Kitayama took his mother's last name, "Takao." Until his grandfather passed away, Ando lived a relatively nice life with his father's parents; however, after being left with his grandmother, Ando spent his youth in a small lean apartment on the second floor. It was scalding hot in the summer and freezing during the winter. He had to make due with what he had, while knowing that his double for always experiencing a slightly different world than him.

Story # 2: Ando and His Grandmother

That's a man influenced by a Grandmother

Ando's grandmother played a central role in how he came to see the world. She was a woman of stringent ethics and definitely believed there was a right and wrong way of doing things. As the famous saying from the Talmud goes, “Ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.” She believed Ando would become great through will and perseverance. This led to several interesting anecdotes, ranging from Ando's sense of the proper notions of sportsmanship to going to the hospital by himself as a kid to get his tonsils removed. His grandmother made him approach the world rationally — this is what you must do — and with a sense of possibility.

Story # 3: From a boxer to a self-taught architect

Unlike many other successful architects of his time, Ando was poor and uninterested in studying. He would often score last in his primary and middle school tests. Instead, Ando was interested in playing sports. When he wasn't playing baseball after school, Ando would gather his friends and fight with wooden swords. This is a boy who liked to fight.

While his peers were studying for their college entrance exams, Ando became a professional boxer at the age of 17. However, after watching former flyweight and bantamweight boxing champ, Harada, he realized that he would never reach that level of skill and talent. The former champs agility, strength, cardio function, and recovery rate made him seem as if he came from another world. Ando quit professional boxing and searched for what he could do with his life.

Architecture would seem a strange choice for a boxer, but the field shares many of the skills that boxing requires: a sense of space, an acute awareness of others, the ability to make decisions on the fly, and the toughness to take punches and persevere.These experiences have set Ando apart from the mainstream in architecture and you can feel it in two of his pieces at different moments in his career.

Church of Light

Perfect

One of Ando's most significant pieces is the Church of Light, a 1,230 sq. ft. sanctuary that is about the size of a small house in Osaka. The church was initially planned to be an addition to the wooden chapel of the pastor's home. It was constructed under severe financial shortages and required a great deal of ingenuity on Ando’s part to complete.

Even with a limited amount of resources, the Church of Light is one of Ando’s most renowned pieces. It subtly celebrates the beauty of nature and evokes a sense of the divine. Located in the city of Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, Japan and constructed in 1989, the Church of Light was and still is the main chapel of the Ibaraki Kasugaoka Church. With the penetrating wall angled at 15° that divides the delicately suggestive entrance and the sanctuary itself, the Church of Light consists of three twenty foot concrete cubes.

Another way of seeing

When the Japanese economy crashed and the project was in jeopardy, Ando didn't give up and honed his design to focus on the most critical part of the construction, which was the chapel. He restrained himself with the rest of the incidental spaces and materials so that he could keep to his original vision. It’s important to note that he gave up on the scope of the project, but not the central vision.

One of the ways Ando stuck to his vision was to build the church with exposed concrete and leave the surface as it is. That was a relatively inexpensive way to finish the outside of the building. Entering Church of Light, the space to the left is a chapel and the area to the right, which visitors have to slide around to enter, is used as the office for the children's Sunday school.

When you enter the chapel, the light enters it through an opening in the far wall that is in the shape of a cross. It transforms the natural coldness of the exposed concrete into something warm and inviting, illuminating the wooden floors and pews as if from the whole of nature. To say that Ando captures the spirituality of nature would be an understatement.

Church of Water

The Church of Water: Ando loves the elements

Ando clearly loves natural elements and his Church on the Water is a great example of how he sees no difference between nature and the built environment. The Church on the Water is located in Tomamu, Shimukappu on the island of Hokkaido in Northern Japan. Similar to the Church of Light, Church on the Water is a relatively small sanctuary.

Some believe that the church is part of the Alpha Resort hotel; though, the two properties abut each other, the church faces away from the hotel and an L-shaped wall creates a strong symbolic border. The church itself faces a serene forest of trees and gentle streams. The artificial pond in front of the church, which is a rectangle bordered by four platforms of 15 meters, becomes a visual representation of the wind that moves through the forest. As in all of Ando’s work, everything is distinct but in harmony.

Nature and Architecture Merge

The refined artificial appearance of the pond creates the context for how we view the church. The flickering of water in a quiet garden reminds viewers of a traditional Japanese rock Garden. Water also marks areas for the chapel and helps to ensure the identity of buildings. Unlike the water on the outskirts of Japan's imperial castle, the water of The Church of Water does not have a confrontational relationship with the building and its surroundings.

The church is mainly made of concrete and glass. The floor is made of slabs of black granite. Ando likes to think of the church as made out of water, but what the church really shows is how he’s able to transform and bend nature to his will, creating little or no separation between what is made and what is already there.

©Richard Cho and the CCA Arts Review