Tadao Andō Langen Foundation
We’ve been invited to see the new exhibition Polyphon at the Langen Foundation with artists of the Collection Viehof. A work of art in itself is the sublime minimalistic architecture by Pritzker-prize winner Tadao Andō. Situated in the nature the perception of the spaces change with different light situations and during the seasons. The annual cherry blossom is simply overwhelming.
Architect: Tadao Andō
Project: Langen Foundation
Year: 2004
Location: Neuss-Duesseldorf
Function: Museum
“Born in Ōsaka in 1941, Tadao Ando fist came to the fore in 1976 with his prize-winning Row House (Azuma Residence), Sumiyoshi. Self-taught, save for a brief apprenticeship with a Japanese carpenter, Ando emerged almost overnight as an architect of world stature without ever attending a school of architecture or serving as an assistant to a master architect. Pressed to give an explanation of his unusual development as an architect, he will only admit to two influences: the spiritual depth of Japanese building architecture and the study tours that he made during the second half of the sixties. […]
More than any other contemporary figure, Ando has been the architect of the reinforced concrete wall, creating volumes delimited by such boundaries, not only in order to define space but also to form it in such a way as to admit and reveal an ever-changing pattern of light. Aside from employing walls as domain-defining planes, Ando has also expoited the wall as a datum against which to read an internal armature of freestanding columns and beams.
From his self-consciously cross-cultural position, Ando sees the reinforced concrete frame as a universal twentieth-century technique, which for all its manifest advantages, has robbed the central Shintō column – the so-called daikokubashira – of its symbolic potency and the classical colonnade of its plastic rhythm. At the same time, he regards the wall as a protective shield that is categorically opposed to the infinite space-field of the modern megalopolis.”
– Kenneth Frampton
“Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more … We are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway…”
– Jun’ichirō Tanizaki: In Praise of Shadows (1934)
