He works primarily in exposed cast-in-place concrete and is renowned for an exemplary craftsmanship which invokes a Japanese sense of materiality, junction and spatial narrative through the pared aesthetics of international modernism.In 1969, he established the firm Tadao Ando Architects & Associates. In 1995, Ando won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize medallion; an award generally considered to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Architecture. He donated the $100,000 prize money to the orphans of the 1995 Kobe earthquake.Tadao Ando's work is known for the creative use of natural light and for architectures that follow the natural forms of the landscape (rather than disturbing the landscape by making it conform to the constructed space of a building). The architect's buildings are often characterized by complex three-dimensional circulation paths. These paths interweave between interior and exterior spaces formed both inside large-scale geometric shapes and in the spaces between them.His "Row House in Sumiyoshi" (Azuma House), a small two-story, cast-in-place concrete house completed in 1976, is an early work that begins to show elements of his characteristic style. It consists of three equally sized rectangular volumes: two enclosed volumes of interior spaces separated by an open courtyard. By nature of the courtyard's position between the two interior volumes, it becomes an integral part of the house's circulation system.
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