Tadao Ando Emaki-Style Sketchbooks and Ground Zero Project, Art Basel 2007

June 06, 2007 - June 09, 2007

Yoshii Gallery is pleased to present Tadao Ando’s Emaki-Style Sketchbooks and Ground Zero Project for Art Basel 2007.

Emaki-Style Sketchbooks
Ando’s unique emaki-style was created as a method of recording the disjointed flow of ideas into a coherent narrative of his projects. Inspired by the fluidity of traditional Japanese hand scrolls, the sketchbooks are constructed by joining pages at the seams and then folding them along the seams, like an accordion. By adding additional pages, this format can be extended easily to accommodate expanding ideas, yet still be contained in one easily transportable volume.

Unburdened by technical, functional and economic concerns, the initial sketches often embody the artistic concepts more vividly than the actualized work. Ando’s work emphasizes his unique understanding of the relationship between architecture and natural elements, incorporating light, water and geographic restraints into his designs.

Ground Zero Project
The terrorist attack in New York, on the morning of September 11, 2001 took many precious lives, as well as deprived the City of its most important “memory”.

We cannot forgive this act. This is a time to think.

How can we human beings, living with causes of discord in this confined space of the earth, live together? How can we operate as a single community, respecting each other? If we are to fill the void at the site of the lost World Trade Center, it should not be with architecture but with a “place” to remember and reflect.

I propose creating a memorial tomb.

In section, the tomb is a segment, one sixth of a circle, whose radius is one thirty thousandth of that of the earth, the height of this landscape being about thirty meters above ground level. I think that what we need now is the courage to construct nothing more.