Tadao Ando

The Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum is located on the southern edge of Naoshima island between a high hill covered with deep woods and a promontory of rugged rocks and beach.Arriving by sea visitors ascend a long staircase that meets the road leading to the museum from town. The Museum entrance is at the end of this deliberately drawn-out approach.


Langen Foundation
Neuss, Germany



The Langen Foundation is located at the Raketenstation Hombroich, a former NATO base, in the midst of the idyllic landscape of the Hombroich cultural environment.
Visitors enter through a cut-out in the semicircular concrete wall, opening up the view to the glass, steel and concrete building.
A path, bordered by a row of cherry trees, guide visitors around the pond to the entrance on the longitudinal side of the building.




A self-trained architect, Ando was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1941. He studied traditional Japanese architecture and traveled to the United States, Europe, and Africa studying Western architecture and techniques, and founded Tadao Ando Architect & Associates in Osaka in 1969. Combining modern Western architecture and the simple geometric forms of traditional Japanese architecture, Ando has designed museums, religious structures, and residential and commercial buildings in Germany, Spain, Italy, and France as well as his native Japan. Ando is the recipient of the 1995 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2002 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and this June was named recipient of the Kyoto Prize for lifetime achievement in the arts and philosophy.

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts