The Real and the Imaginary

architect Tadao Ando
interviewed by Maroje Mrduljaš

 

Tadao Ando’s studio is located in the centre of Osaka, in a quiet neighbourhood not far from the main railway station. A small concrete building, originally planned as a family house, has become Ando's trademark working space and underwent several extensions, including a completely new building on the plot on the opposite side of the street. The studio’s central space is a vertical empty space around which narrow staircases and galleries are wrapped. This skylit core is surrounded by a huge continuous library to which numerous packed working spaces are connected. Conversations with Tadao Ando took place on 26 and 27 April 2016, around a great working space on the ground floor, in company with a couple of Ando’s associates, among sketches, models and drawings of the project on which they were currently working. Unlike the conventional, precisely structured interview from 2010, with a previously prepared synopsis, or an informal conversation we had in 2012, we talked in a dynamic atmosphere in the midst of the working process in a studio.