Last week Mr. Romansky discussed Sir Norman Foster. This week he gets all Japanese with it.

"Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural wild and free."
-Aldo Leopold

The cultural context of Ando's development as an architect tell us something of the ethical underpinnings of his own design style. First, Ando is largely self-taught as an architect, with none of the institutionalized, academic training that Foster received. Further, the soothing texture of many of Ando's structures owes much to his apprenticeship to a local carpenter as a young boy. Indeed, what Ando refers to as the long tradition of fine carpentry in his home prefecture is directly responsible for the silken appearance of the concrete in his buildings (the molds for his concrete are varnished and sealed with the great precision that comes with years of experience). In light of Ando's craft-based background and his hands-on work with the materials of the land, it stands to reason that he would develop an ethical system deeply in touch with nature. Additionally, where the religious traditions of Foster's classically Western upbringing often cast nature in an adversarial light, contrasting God and wilderness, Eastern religions largely associate the two. The Buddhist faith stresses a man-nature relationship marked by love and compassion for all living things. Shinto, the dominant religion of Japan, deifies mountains, forests, and storms, casting nature not as a force to be owned and overcome, but to be revered and respected. In short, the cultural ethic of Ando's upbringing is one closely in step with Aldo Leopold's land ethic. It is not surprising, then, that Ando would evade the tide of rapid technological advance that swept the country during the economic boom that characterized 1980's Japan.

In fact, his architecture appears to be a reaction against such a change. Noted critic Kenneth Frampton sees Ando's brand of regionalist architecture as a rejection of "consumerist iconography masquerading as culture." William Curtis deems Ando's work a "response to the artificiality of capitalist, consumerist sprawl," seeing his "desire to help man 'discover a new relationship with nature' [as a] critical reaction to the transience of late industrialism...." Of his own aims, Ando says, "Human life is not intended to possess nature and endeavor to control it, but rather to draw nature into an intimate association in order to find union with it. One can go so far as to say that, in Japan, all forms of spiritual exercise are traditionally carried out within the context of the human interrelationship with nature."

Ando's words are almost exactly that of Leopold's. And both Curtis and Frampton understand Ando's architecture to be antithetical to the possessor/commodity man/earth relationship associated with the spread of capitalism in the West. The ethical system supporting the design of Ando's works both acknowledges and seeks to augment the man-land community.

His Church on the Water at Tomamu is especially exemplary of this ethic in action. In this building, Ando's is a vocabulary of essentials -- simple geometric forms, bare walls, smooth concrete. This is far from the complicated lattice work (inspired by Fuller's tetrahedron) of Foster's office building. These simple forms serve to downplay the role of technological advance in the creation of the building. While the reinforced concrete of Ando's building is just as much a part of the industrial process as Foster's steel, Ando's use does not rejoice in the technological appearance of the material, but in the natural origins of it. The aesthetics of the material in Ando's building stress the relationship of material to earth, while Foster's presentation stresses the man-made refinements to the material. This choice avoids Leopold's technology trap: the visitor to the temple is aware of the fact that industry supports man and that nature supports industry. Thus, Ando's building is ethically good because it enforces the visitor's awareness of the man-land mutualism.

Further, the church is surrounded by a beech forest that gently slopes down toward a small river. The low-lying profile of the building and cascading length of the pond echo the shallow gradient of the hill. The building sinks into the earth around it. The church also incorporates natural design elements -- light and wind are literally part of the church's formal language. In contrast to the Commerzbank, where light is not a design element in itself but rather design elements are exploited to capture light for standard uses, Ando's Church fuses the built environment with the natural environment. Further, the large open space that looks out over the pond and surrounding hillside has no wall, only a view. The implied wall is actually air and vista. Once again, man becomes aware of his relation to the land-community because it is one of the support elements of his dwelling. Additionally, this opening allows actual air and light into the building without filtration. Of this feature, Ando says, "[Japanese] culture de-emphasizes the physical boundary between residence and surrounding nature.... While screening man's dwelling from nature it attempts to draw nature inside. There is no clear demarcation between outside and inside, but rather their mutual permeation. Today, unfortunately, nature has lost much of its former abundance, just as we have enfeebled our ability to perceive nature. Contemporary architecture, thus, has a role to play in providing people with architectural places that make them feel the presence of nature.... When water, wind, light, rain, and other elements of nature are abstracted within architecture, the architecture becomes a place where people and nature confront each other under a sustained sense of tension. I believe it is this feeling of tension that will awaken the spiritual sensibilities latent in contemporary humanity."

These words are, once again, almost exactly parallel that of Leopold. Further Ando's design platform reveals an ethical system in agreement with Leopold's statement that if we are to preserve the earth for the future generations, man must confront nature on a new ethical footing, one in which the land is welcomed as part of a community and not treated as a commodity.

Finally, the church is meant to weather. The cross in the middle of the pond shows signs of rust. The symbolic centerpiece of the building's spiritual aims is imprinted and changed by the natural community around it. Further, the condensation on the glass and steel box at the entrance to the church is meant to change the visual force of the box. Once again, natural elements are part of the design of the building.

While architecture can't by itself change the values of a culture, it can make the culture aware that other value systems exist. Norman Foster, himself said "Architects cannot solve the world's ecological problems but we can design buildings to run at a fraction of current energy levels and we can influence transport patterns through urban planning." Foster's contribution to the cause of conservation is undeniably valuable. Reducing consumption of resources by 50%, as he did in the Commerzbank headquarters, is an impressive and ecologically necessary feat. His limited use of natural ventilation and opening windows even reveal the beginnings of a more mutualistic attitude toward the relationship between man and nature. However, his buildings do not display the fundamental ethical solution to the problem of man exploiting the earth that Tadao Ando's do. The vision of conservation which Ando presents through the language of his buildings, where man and land exist as part of a mutually recognized community and where man has both privilege and obligation to the land, is just as necessary to the continued viability of earth's systems as Fosters consumption cutting measures. Further it is possible that on a symbolic level Foster's formal vocabulary, dedication to technology, and choice of materials prove detrimental to the idea that there is a man-earth community. In the end, however, both approaches appear to be necessary and need not be mutually exclusive. While Foster goes farther toward actually saving the earth's resources on a literal level and Ando does more on a symbolic level to remind people of their obligation to the land, there is no reason that a building cannot be technically advanced while stressing the natural roots of its design elements and incorporating the surrounding environment. If the architect is to foster a sustainable relationship between man and earth, he must work on both a tangible and symbolic level.

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