#204: TADAO ANDO | MUSEUM MINUS THE ROOF

In a world of architectural iteration and imitation—where ideas are too prevalent through the influential forces of media—it is rare to find a project that is the exception to the rule. In Kyoto, Japan, the Garden of Fine Arts is a unique museum simply for one reason: It has no roof.

Self-taught architect, Tadao Ando, born 1941, started his career as a professional boxer—of all things. It is said that his visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tokyo Imperial Hotel inspired the young boxer to switch from fighting others with his fists to fighting creative ideas with pencil and paper. Running an architectural studio in Osaka, the 1995 Pritzker Prize-recipient offers Zen-like, minimal, austere designs. Wikipedia states, “Ando’s architectural style is said to create a ‘haiku’ effect, emphasizing nothingness and empty space to represent the beauty of simplicity.”

The architectural elements of the Garden of Fine Arts make up an economic mixture: overlapping walls, ramps and water. The open-air museum starts at street level, then ramps visitors down and further down—a design that retains views to the Botanical Gardens nearby and Higashiyama mountains beyond.

Completed in 1994, the building—a kind of anti-building—delivers the art world of Europe to a historical capital city of Japan. The spiritual journey within the museum presents eight classic masterpieces reproduced on ceramic porcelain panels/plates, to name a few:

• da Vinci’s Last Supper,
• Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment,
• Monet’s Water Lilies, and
• Renoir’s On the Terrace.

Throughout the project, Ando uses his signature material, poured-in-place concrete. It is not applied in a commonplace manner. Rather, his concrete possesses a luxurious quality akin to natural stone. There is no industrial rawness here. Instead, the architect achieves lightness, even silkiness. Concrete is rarely used in Japanese architecture, whether traditional or contemporary. The country’s design vernacular looks towards wood, stone and paper, yet nearly all of Ando’s works are entirely concrete, cast in place.

An additional design material—if you can call it that—is used throughout, an unexpected medium—that of sound. The building engages the museum-goer aurally, as one hears: footsteps reverberate on concrete; breezes wrap around corners; voices echoe from behind walls; and waterfalls crash into shallow reflecting pools.

And with no roof, the design relies heavily on the walls. Such walls: present art; loosely imply rooms; guide one’s path into the earth; frame views and vistas; and slice through space. Tadao Ando has proclaimed, “At times walls manifest a power that borders on the violent. They have the power to divide space, transfigure place, and create new domains. Walls are the most basic elements of architecture, but they can also be the most enriching.”