N. A. KONOVALOVA Candidate of Art History Keywords: Tadao Ando, Japanese architecture, interior, landscape Tadao Ando - one of the most famous and recognized architects in the world - will celebrate its 70th anniversary in 2011. He has received numerous awards in his home country, Japan; the winner of the most prestigious awards in the world: the Alvar Aalto Prize (1985), the French Academy of Architecture (1989), the Carlsberg Prize (1992) and the Pritzker Prize (1995), and the Royal Institute of British Architects (1997). Tadao Ando is a self-taught architect. And today, when communicating with students of some prestigious architectural institution of the West or East, they will definitely say that visiting a university is not the main thing in mastering the profession, an architect must feel the design, everything else can be studied independently.1 It's no secret that childhood, family, and youthful hobbies leave a serious imprint on both the perception of life and creativity. Ando spent his childhood on the streets of Osaka, where he learned to take risks and never give up. Ando is still the same daredevil he was when he was young as an adult. Professional boxing made him tough, able to hold a punch and achieve the maximum. Just as you can't box half-heartedly, otherwise you will quickly go to a knockout, so in creativity it is impossible to "take" a new peak without giving your all, Ando believes. This is what determined the choice of construction material-concrete, which most fully meets all the requirements of the architect, and therefore became a kind of business card of the master. In each of his buildings, the architect shows its beauty and texture. Revealing the aesthetics of concrete - the path followed by more than one great architect of the XX century. Le Corbusier, Mendelssohn, Melnikov-this is only an incomplete list of talented masters who left an architectural heritage in concrete, which has become a world value. THE PLAY OF LIGHT AND SHADOW Tadao ... Read more