The Italian Cultural Institute in Osaka has produced a new series of testimonial videos titled “Italy’s Great Friends” in which Japanese masters in various fields of art tell of their personal relationship with Italy. The series kicked off last 23 March and is now available online.
In the first episode, the narrator is Tadao Ando, Japan’s most famous living architect, who says: “Living in a house is not only a problem of functionality but it is also a spiritual issue. Home is the place of the heart, and the heart is the place of God”.
Tadao Ando, born in Osaka in 1941, opened his firm Tadao Ando Architects & Associates in 1969. Since then, he has left his unmistakable hallmark in innumerable masterpieces throughout the world, in a fruitful dialogue between dryness of forms, empty spaces and the severity of Zen thinking, expressed in exposed concrete walls. The many prizes awarded to him include the Annual Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan (1979), the Pritzker Prize (1995), the Kennedy Center Golden Prize for Art (2010). Among his solo exhibitions, special mention should be made of the ones hosted at the MoMA in New York (1991) and at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1993).
In Italy, the projects that he realized include the Benetton Group’s Fabrica Research Centre in Villorba (province of Treviso), the rehabilitation project of Punta della Dogana in Venice, the seat of the François Pinault Foundation. For Giorgio Armani, he designed the headquarters of his fashion house and Teatro Armani in Milan.
To watch the first episode of the series click here
