Tadao Ando, The Water Temple

Tadao Ando is that rare architect who combines artistic and intellectual sensitivity in a single individual capable of producing buildings, large and small, that both serve and inspire. His powerful inner vision, ignores whatever movements, schools or styles that might be current, creating buildings with form and composition related to the kind of life that will be lived there.

* Morimoto restaurant in the Chelsea Market, his first project in Manhattan, opened January 2006.

In progress

* House, stable, and mausoleum for former fashion designer Tom Ford , near Santa Fe, New Mexico
* New Tokyo Tower [10] - to be the world's tallest structure upon completion.

His Water Temple is a stunning use of water and sacred geometry.





Water Temple Link


Minimalism in Design


The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work De Stijl artists is a big source of reference this kind of work. De Stijl expanded the ideas that could be expressed by using basic elements such as lines and planes organized in very particular manners.

Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe adopted the motto "Less is more" to describe his aesthetic tactics of flattening and emphasizing the building's frame, eliminating interior walls and adopting an open plan, and reducing the structure to a strong, transparent, elegant skin. Designer Buckminster Fuller adopted a similar saying, "Doing more with less", but his concerns were oriented towards technology and engineering rather than aesthetics. The other modern master people still observe to study reductivist ideas is Luis Barragan. In minimalism, the architectural designers pay special attention to the connection between perfect planes, elegant lighting, and careful consideration of the void spaces left over after the removal of three dimensional shapes from an architectural design.

Contemporary architects working in this tradition include John Pawson, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Alvaro Siza, Tadao Ando, Alberto Campo Baeza,Yoshio Taniguchi, Peter Zumthor, Vincent Van Duysen, Claudio Silvestrin, Michael Gabellini, and Richard Gluckman.