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The
AIA Board of Directors selected Japanese architect Tadao Ando, Hon. FAIA,
to receive the 2002 AIA Gold Medal award. The highest honor the AIA confers
to an individual, the Gold Medal recognizes an individual whose significant
body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of
architecture. The Board selected Ando December 6 in Washington, D.C. He
will receive the medal at the 2002 American Architectural Foundation Accent
on Architecture gala Friday, March 1, 2002, in Washington, D.C.
"Thank
you! I'm so happy," said Ando, when notified by AIA President John
D. Anderson, FAIA, that he had won the award. Through a translator, he
explained that he thinks of the AIA Gold Medal as a special honor because
of his work in the United States, and considered it an especially "warm
welcome."
Ando, 60, is the 59th AIA Gold Medalist, joining
the ranks of such visionaries as Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright,
Louis Sullivan, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, I.M. Pei, Cesar Pelli, and 2001
AIA Gold Medal recipient Michael Graves. In recognition of their legacy
to architecture, the name of each Gold Medal recipient is chiseled into
a granite wall of honor located in the lobby of the AIA headquarters in
Washington, D.C.
"Mr.
Ando's buildings embody the timelessness of all enduring architecture,
but pay homage to such twentieth century icons as Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier,"
said David H. Watkins, FAIA, the AIA Texas regional director who nominated
Ando for the award.
During Ando's 30-year professional career at the
forefront of architectural design, his work has been published in 12 monographs
and featured in more than 300 professional journals, books, and catalogues.
Some of his best-known projects include the Pulitzer Foundation for the
Arts, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum,
and the Eychaner/Lee House in Chicago.
Ando's
Gold Medal nomination lauded him as "that rare architect who combines
artistic and intellectual sensitivity in a single individual capable of
producing buildings, large and small, that both serve and inspire."
He credits his success to his cultural roots in western Japan, home to
some of the finest examples of traditional Japanese architecture. One
of Japan's leading writers, Koji Taki, has succinctly summarized Mr. Ando's
contribution to the field of architecture as that of connecting "the
art of building to the art of living."
Admired and respected by colleagues all over the
world, Ando has served as a visiting professor at Yale University, Columbia
University, and Harvard. He currently holds the chair of Professor of
Architecture at the University of Tokyo.
Ando
has earned numerous awards, including virtually every award Japan can
bestow for architecture and the arts as well as the Pritzker Architecture
Prize, the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, Denmark's Carlsberg Architectural Prize,
the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Academy of Art
and Letters, and the Gold Medal of Architecture from the French Academy
of Architecture. His work has been the focus of numerous exhibits, including
the critically acclaimed exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York in 1991 and the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1992.
Copyright 2001 The American Institute of Architects.
All rights reserved.
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