"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"
About this Quote
Tadao Ando draws a line between two studios: the glowing screen and the drawing table. He is not warning against technology so much as insisting on mobility. The computer opens a realm of generative possibilities, from parametric variation to instant visualization and simulation. It accelerates iteration, reveals structural and environmental performance, and lets designers choreograph complexity with a precision that hand methods rarely match. That is a genuine form of creativity, one that can discover patterns and relationships through algorithms, data, and speed.
Yet Ando’s architecture, shaped by travel, hand sketches, and a deep sensitivity to light and material, reminds us that space is ultimately felt in the body. Concrete is not a polygon mesh; it has weight, smell, heat, pores. Light grazes a wall differently at 9 a.m. in winter than it does in a rendering. The subtle interval of ma, the pause that animates Japanese space, emerges from proportion, silence, and time spent standing on site. These are forms of knowledge the computer cannot experience for us.
Moving between worlds means being bilingual: reading code and grain, analyzing performance and listening to echoes in an empty room. It means letting the virtual proliferate options, then editing with the discipline of touch and memory. The danger on one side is seduction by flawless screens that hide construction joints, weather, and budgets. On the other is a nostalgic refusal that blinds itself to new ways of seeing and making.
Ando’s call extends beyond architecture. Musicians, photographers, writers, and artists all navigate this hinge between tool and sensation. Creativity does not reside in one camp; it lives in the crossing. When the digital expands imagination and the analog anchors judgment, form gains clarity, atmosphere gains weight, and ideas gain consequence. The work becomes both calculated and felt, precise and humane.
Yet Ando’s architecture, shaped by travel, hand sketches, and a deep sensitivity to light and material, reminds us that space is ultimately felt in the body. Concrete is not a polygon mesh; it has weight, smell, heat, pores. Light grazes a wall differently at 9 a.m. in winter than it does in a rendering. The subtle interval of ma, the pause that animates Japanese space, emerges from proportion, silence, and time spent standing on site. These are forms of knowledge the computer cannot experience for us.
Moving between worlds means being bilingual: reading code and grain, analyzing performance and listening to echoes in an empty room. It means letting the virtual proliferate options, then editing with the discipline of touch and memory. The danger on one side is seduction by flawless screens that hide construction joints, weather, and budgets. On the other is a nostalgic refusal that blinds itself to new ways of seeing and making.
Ando’s call extends beyond architecture. Musicians, photographers, writers, and artists all navigate this hinge between tool and sensation. Creativity does not reside in one camp; it lives in the crossing. When the digital expands imagination and the analog anchors judgment, form gains clarity, atmosphere gains weight, and ideas gain consequence. The work becomes both calculated and felt, precise and humane.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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