Current Work is a lecture series featuring leading figures in the worlds of architecture, urbanism, design, and art.

Tadao Ando is the founding principal of Tadao Ando Architect and Associates. He is a self-educated architect who spent time in Kyoto and Nara studying firsthand the great monuments of traditional Japanese architecture, and then melded these with his knowledge of architecture gleaned on travels to Europe, Africa, and the United States. In 1969, Ando established his practice in Osaka.

Ando’s notable works include the Church of the Light in Osaka, the Armani Teatro in Milan, and the Benesse Art Site Naoshima. In the United States, he designed The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; and the expansion of Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. One of Ando’s current projects is 152 Elizabeth Street, a residential building in New York City.

He has been a visiting professor at Yale, Columbia, and Harvard Universities, and in 1997 became professor of architecture at Tokyo University. Ando has received numerous architecture awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995 and the 2002 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, among others.

This lecture is cosponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union and made possible with the support of the Japan Foundation.

The program is additionally supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.