"The computer offers another kind of creativity. You cannot ignore the creativity that computer technology can bring. But you need to be able to move between those two different worlds"
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Ando isn’t making a peace treaty between “handmade” and “high-tech” so much as issuing a warning to architects who want the romance of craft without the discipline of adaptation. The line carries his trademark restraint: no hype about innovation, no nostalgic sermon about tradition. Just a cool acknowledgment that computers expand the palette - and a sharper insistence that the real skill is translation.
The subtext is generational, and it’s quietly combative. Ando came up outside the academic mainstream, formed by travel, observation, and an almost ascetic commitment to light, concrete, and proportion. In that world, creativity isn’t novelty; it’s control. So when he grants “another kind of creativity” to the computer, he’s granting legitimacy while refusing surrender. Technology can generate form, iterate options, simulate structure and atmosphere, even seduce clients with frictionless images. None of that guarantees architecture. It can just as easily produce a glossy blur of decisions no one is accountable for.
“Move between those two different worlds” is the tell: the computer is a world with its own logic, shortcuts, and biases, and so is the physical one - gravity, weather, materials, labor, time. Ando’s intent is to keep authorship alive across that border. The context is architecture’s long swing from drawing board to CAD to parametric design, and the professional pressure to be fluent in both: the machine’s speed and the site’s stubbornness. Creativity, here, is not a tool. It’s a posture of refusal - refusing to let either tradition or technology do the thinking for you.
The subtext is generational, and it’s quietly combative. Ando came up outside the academic mainstream, formed by travel, observation, and an almost ascetic commitment to light, concrete, and proportion. In that world, creativity isn’t novelty; it’s control. So when he grants “another kind of creativity” to the computer, he’s granting legitimacy while refusing surrender. Technology can generate form, iterate options, simulate structure and atmosphere, even seduce clients with frictionless images. None of that guarantees architecture. It can just as easily produce a glossy blur of decisions no one is accountable for.
“Move between those two different worlds” is the tell: the computer is a world with its own logic, shortcuts, and biases, and so is the physical one - gravity, weather, materials, labor, time. Ando’s intent is to keep authorship alive across that border. The context is architecture’s long swing from drawing board to CAD to parametric design, and the professional pressure to be fluent in both: the machine’s speed and the site’s stubbornness. Creativity, here, is not a tool. It’s a posture of refusal - refusing to let either tradition or technology do the thinking for you.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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