Tadao Ando: Mutual independence, mutual permeation

1 - There are both offensive and defensive walls. In other words, walls can express both violence and rejection. In several urban houses that I have designed to date, the walls certainly had an aggressive appearance and also contained an element of violence in their silence. I intended for them to question the nature of contemporary society again.
2 - In my urban houses, multi-storey spaces and open areas (courtyards) are contained within otherwise closed structures. The external environment is always isolated, and inside, I create a new, special world.
3 - Walls in urban environments are fundamentally different from walls of violence and rejection and must initially act flatteringly on the observer. In other words, they must reject and repel while also inviting and, conversely, inviting even when they repel. They represent treacherous architecture.
4 - Passages must not be completely closed if we are to achieve an intimate relationship between the street and the house. They come alive through the mutual permeation of the public sphere and the private sphere. This allows one to feel that life pulses in every unit.
5 - The construction site is the silence of the river that is the street and the city. It is a place where the ceiling is the heavens.

Light and Wind
1 - Light adds drama to beauty. Wind and rain, through their effect on the human body, bring color to life. Architecture is a medium that allows people to feel the presence of nature.
2 - In my works, light is always an important factor that dramatizes space.
3 - In courtyards (atria), nature shows its various aspects every day. These are the cores of the life that unfolds in the house and the means that allow the entry of natural phenomena such as light, wind, and rain, which we forget in the city.
4 - By bringing nature inside and transforming light into simple geometric shapes that are excluded in an urban context, I create complex spaces. I allow the exceptional to penetrate the most ordinary and familiar environment - the house - thereby prompting people to reflect on what is actually ordinary.
5 - In the West, there is a sky that is integrated with architectural space. We see it when closed spaces suddenly meet open ones.

The Seal of Individual Will
1 - The primary landscape is consciousness, cloaked in darkness, light that gradually diminishes with depth, the feeling of a cool touch, a terrifying colonnade in the focus of diffuse light, the echo of laughter returning from the space between the columns back to the murky, flickering light.
2 - What I can do is push Modernism a little further and explore its possibilities - to utilize what has been overlooked and neglected. Architecture must relate to the city and society in very specific ways and avoid being spoiled by intellectual manipulations such as historicism and semiotics.
3 - In design, it is important for me to find a balance between what is logical and what is illogical.
4 - I want my buildings to transcend the limits of physical size. I want people to question the essence of dwelling and for their bodies to awaken to experience life.
5 - My buildings are characterized by a limited palette of materials used and the direct presence of material texture. As for the space, the spaces I create do not necessarily need to clearly express a function.

Field of Force
1 - There are many approaches to architecture. However, to the extent that architecture is an important component for the city, architects must be accountable to it.
2 - The slope requires a holistic, all-encompassing approach to the construction site, focused on creating a three-dimensional "emptiness" (yohaku).
3 - The framed sky generates light and shadow, inspiring a person to question the meaning of nature and helping them understand the compositional elements of space. The processing of place becomes a three-dimensional shaping of the landscape.
4 - Japanese architecture evolved from the intersection of the artificial and the natural, from the "reading" of topography and a sensitive responsiveness to nature. Rapid urbanization has prevented architects from seeking help in nature, and architecture itself cannot create a favorable environment.
5 - In a given (construction) place, architecture tries to dominate the emptiness, yet at the same time, the emptiness dominates architecture. If the house is to be autonomous and have its own character, then both the building and the emptiness must have their own logic.

The Will of the Wall
1 - Similar to a fortress in the desert, the wall is not only a protective barrier but a spiritual promontory, clearly defining its presence in the changing flow of the city and rejecting any conceivable idea of the public.
2 - The wall evokes a desire to draw on it, perhaps because it is flat. This desire, however, must be suppressed. A painted wall has been stripped of the meaning of the material from which it is built. When it becomes a sign, it ceases to exist as such.
3 - The framed structure of the same spans is the foundation of Modernism. It has taken away the meaning, sacred character, and rhythm from the columns. Thus, walls have replaced columns as the bearing theme of architecture.
4 - The enclosing wall is not simply a defense. The wall is a means of aggressive expression of the will of the inhabitant to live in the city. At the same time, it also provides a space for private life, developing within.
5 - The wall is the place where the logic of the city meets the logic of the enclosed space. It is the smallest and most fundamental regulator of urban structure.

Homogeneous and Multilayered Landscape
1 - The landscape gradually acquires a higher, architectural character when columns, walls, and individual building elements are placed within it in a way that relates to each other.
2 - My goal may seem like an attempt to create abstract spaces from which humanity, functionality, and lifestyle have been removed. This is so because my buildings embrace what appears at first glance to be empty spaces. However, what I seek are not abstract spaces, but prototypes of spaces.
3 - The dissonance between highly ordered geometry and everyday human life leads to collisions that help create new spaces. In this way, the building acquires a clear identity.
4 - The homogeneous space created using structural frames of the same span is the first principle of modern architecture. Yet my intention is to create spaces that may appear at first glance to be simple, yet in reality are far from it - I want to create complex spaces that are the result of simplifications.
5 - I combine individual spaces, protected yet open, to create a whole. It is not just a simple combination of parts and the parts are not controlled from the outside. The individual element is the foundation of the project and the relationship between the individual element and the whole is always taken into account as the project develops from the inside out.