As the sixth project with Tadao Ando, amanasalto is presenting ANDO BOX VI, a portfolio of Ando’s architecture photographed by himself. The 15 photographs are showing the perspective of Ando in pursuit of “the light of architecture”. These selections are different from typical architectural photography – they are indeed the prototypes of Ando’s concepts and the creations by human civilization, which convey the universality of Ando’s architecture.

The prints are published with the platinum printing technology of amanasalto for the highest permanence. In addition, the portfolio includes three original drawings by Tadao Ando and a three-dimensional conceptual model of Chichu Art Museum in Naoshima.

The Light of Architecture

Some works of architecture are difficult to forget. One such structure for me is Le Corbusier’s of Notre Dame du Haut chapel in Ronchamp, a structure I visited on my first journey around the world in my late twenties. This father of modernism – a famed master – constructed the liberated, uninhibited structure of concrete near the end of his life, and in doing so, he appears to renounce that path he forged to get there. In traversing the space formed between the curved walls and stepping foot inside, one enters a space of chaos – myriad forms of light pour in from all angles. The revelation of the place was too much to process in a single day, so I returned the next day, and the day after. It was on the third day that I happened to find the chapel during mass. There, I witnessed a space flooded by light beautiful and fierce – within, people sat side-by-side in earnest prayer. In that moment, I understood the power of architecture when directed in pursuit of light.

All man-made structures eventually fade, fall. Looking at the history of architecture as descended from Greece, one can perhaps gain a glimpse of man’s resistance to this　fate, his yearning for eternity. But were I to attain permanence, I would not have it in physical form or substance; I would seek eternity in the minds of people, to create　structures indelible in memory.

In pursuit of this ideal, I create a pure and naked concrete space. By sanding off any adorning elements on the surface structure, a tabula rasa – void space – comes into　view. When projecting fragments of nature upon it, a certain ambience, a vitality, emerges; and I place hope upon that power to galvanize the human spirit. Light, together with the visage of shadow it gives way to, symbolizes those fragments of nature.

A space where the light is distinctive, singular, to that place; to that structure. How do we create such a space – from what framework, through what composition? Where do　we orient the light and to what extent? I have spent much time in single-minded pursuit of light; of light voluminous and liquid, that calls one to scoop it up with the hands; of light quiet and soft, seeping into the heart's recesses. Such images abide in the mind yet remain unrealized in my work; and so my journey of trial and error continues.

Tadao Ando