How Tadao Ando designs with light and darkness

Tadao Ando's Ando Museum in Naoshima, Japan

Source: ANDO MUSEUM / Yoshihiro Asada

In a skilled architect’s hands the most important building materials are free, says Mary Guzowski

To design with light – and darkness – as exquisitely as Tadao Ando, consider the daylighting strategies found at the Ando Museum in Honmura, Naoshima, Japan.

The museum itself exhibits the craft of traditional and contemporary Japanese architecture along with drawings, models and photos of various Ando projects. The theme of the museum is “invisibility”, with Ando transforming a traditional Japanese house into a vessel for his contemporary interventions of space, structure, materials and light.

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