The boxer-turned-urban-guerrilla who graduated into a Pritzker prize-winning architect is having a retrospective at National Art Center Tokyo.
Light bursts into the dark room through a horizontal slit and an intersecting vertical line.
In the simple pews behind the mesmerizing cross-shaped glow, scores of visitors snap pictures on their phones of the concrete installation.
They are inside a life-sized replica of the Church of the Light, the famous Osaka chapel by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, which perfectly demonstrates his signature manipulation of the relationship between concrete, space and light.
Inside, its solemnity is breathtaking. Carving a cruciform into a reinforced concrete wall evokes such a pure feeling of spirituality it seems ludicrous it hadn’t been done before 1989.
But that’s the beauty of an Ando design. « (My work) seems like something which anyone can make, » he tells CNN. « But (nobody) else can make it. It is my architecture. »
The National Arts Center Tokyo has erected the structure on its terrace for its huge retrospective of Ando life’s work that runs until December 18.
The installation is a powerful reply to that problem, but Ando says the real point of the exhibition is to inspire people to « go and see the real ones. »
Ando is a household name in Japan, and his celebrity is expected to attract 150,000 visitors to the exhibition, many from beyond the architecture world.
« Everybody can enjoy Ando’s work, » says Yayoi Motohashi, curator of « Endeavors. » « And his biography is really encouraging. He didn’t have enough money to get an education. He did everything himself. »
Ando’s unlikely rise from obscurity to design some of the world’s most iconic buildings for its richest people is something of an urban legend.
The self-taught Japanese architect was born in 1941 the eldest of twin boys, who were separated in their infancy. Ando went to live with his grandmother, who nurtured in him a talent for craftsmanship.
His younger years had no trace of great promise: he worked briefly as a professional boxer and a lorry driver, before aged 24 boarding a Siberian train to Europe « to see the world. »
Great buildings caught his eye, in particular, the works of Le Corbusier — the Swiss-French Purist whose concrete designs later inspired Ando’s own. The Japanese architect famously named his pet dog Corbusier.
After he sailed back to his native of Osaka, without a degree or having trained with a master, Ando got his architecture license and starting designing buildings.
Back then, he was known as the « urban guerrilla » architect.
From tiny homes with gaping internal courtyards to sprawling housing complexes, and then churches that seemed as much a hymn to his own style as to the spiritual realm, by 1995 Ando’s concrete vision had conquered the architectural world, and he was awarded its highest accolade: the Pritzker Prize.
« His life and his works inspire, » says Motohashi. « That’s why this exhibition is called ‘Endeavors.’ People in Japan don’t try to do big things, they don’t want to make a mistake or have a really huge dream.
« That’s the message to society: Be free to strike out. »
Ando made his breakthrough in 1976 with a windowless reinforced concrete home.
Slotted between three traditional Japanese houses, the Row House in Sumiyoshi is a reclusive stronghold fed natural light only by its interior courtyard. It challenged conventional ideas of the home, and won Ando an award from the Japan Association of Architecture, but was it comfortable to inhabit?
The current owner, who has lived there for 35 years, says: « While feeling the seasonal changes on my skin (in) the courtyard every day, sometimes I resent this house.
