Tadao Ando first came to international attention in the 1970s with houses inserted into the dense fabric of busy Japanese cities, in particular the sprawling Osaka conurbation. This urban reality is a condition that frequently appears chaotic or discordant to Western eyes. Ando’s houses responded to their context through introversion; they often seem cut off or removed from the outside world, with the exception of certain, carefully framed views of nature or of the sky.
These early structures were also typically made from poured-in-place concrete with the circular indentations - tie holes - that result from concrete shuttering blatantly on view. Indeed this meticulous tailoring of an everyday material and of construction methodology gave Ando’s planar surfaces a unique character, finish and measurement. For Ando, the material used to frame space and that material’s structural needs are inextricably linked. Although sometimes classified as a minimalist, Ando’s concerns are less to do with style or look than with the truth and the potential of materials and of light.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Osaka-based architect finessed the use of concrete, a substance often regarded as lacking in nobility, so that it quickly became his signature material. Not only that, architects around the world began to use concrete in similar ways. If one thinks of Ando as a critical regionalist, or as a master architect helping to evolve the culture of modernism, many of these other architects were in effect quoting his work, using exposed concrete primarily as a signifier for contemporaneity, a strange Postmodernism twist thanks to the dissemination of Ando’s work through global media.
Mexico was no different. From the early 1990s onward, residential, retail and boutique office buildings began to appear in the more affluent zones of Mexican cities that mixed concrete, glass and metal almost as a montage of “designer...
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