Conversations with Students
By Tadao Ando

Photo courtesy Princeton Architectural Press

The newest volume in the popular Conversations series features Japanese architect Tadao Ando, best known for crafting serenely austere structures that fuse Japanese building traditions with Western modernism.

His minimalist masterworks, geometric forms clad in silky-smooth exposed concrete, are suffused with natural light and set in perfect harmony with the landscape.

Sketch courtesy Princeton Architectural Press


Photo courtesy Princeton Architectural Press


Photo courtesy Princeton Architectural Press

Photo: arcspace


Photo: arcspace


Photo: arcspace

Photo: arcspace

In these highlights from lectures delivered at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Architecture, Ando candidly describes his experiences as a largely self-taught practitioner, tracing his development from an early interest in the traditional building craft of his native Japan through his political awakening in the turbulent 1960s to his current stature as one of the world's foremost architects.

... By inheriting not merely form, but the hidden spirit within that form, I wanted to return to architecture a sense of identity and specificity. Through the incorporation of natural elements such as light, wind, and water, I tried to express local climate, features, and culture while simultaneously introducing a contemporaneity and universality using the language and materials of modern architecture and geometric composition.

/Tadao Ando


Photo courtesy Princeton Architectural Press

In addition to exploring his aesthetic influences and working process, Ando offers students a road map not only for maintaining professional integrity, but also for becoming effective agents of change in the world.

This book, the first of Ando's writings to be translated into English, includes a foreword by Ando written specifically for this publication.