The Modern Art Museum

Washington, DC

Chapter Author - Frampton & Ando Architect - Tadao Ando

The human body is the summary for “here and now,” and yet we pay no attention to our bodies’ relationship with the environment. Ando slows our focus to better experience the now by producing Shintai architecture. Within this connotation, Shintai is mean the relationship the body has with space; the way our body perceives the built environment through sense.

Located in Fort Worth Texas’ cultural district are a handful of notable art museums designed by highly regarded architects, such as Louis Khan’s Kimbel art museum, Philip Johnson’s Amon Center, and Tadao Ando’s The Modern. Ando recognized the relationship these museums had with one another and therefore proceeded with a design concept that is sympathetic in dialogue with Khans Kimbel art museum. The art museum as described by Ando is a building within a building; a lantern above the water’s surface; an arbor for art. The structure is in yin and yang with both the tectonic and the stereotomic. The iconic symbol associated with the modern art museum is a series of five large-scale Y-column structures. The 40-foot tall columns embody a growing tree, or a reaching swan; personifications in nature. The Y-columns support the massive concrete-slabbed roofscape that cantilevers over the entire museum. Stereotomic characteristics of the building’s identity are juxtaposed by a fragile curtain wall facade. The modern elevation reflects shintai by “introducing nature and human movement into simple geometrical form.” The timeline demonstrates simplicity in geometry in our model study. The curtain seals the soul of the body like an envelope.

The grand curtain wall is held up by tectonic steel and glass, visually dismissing the barrier from the outside. By manipulating reflections from water views and the ferrovitreous structure, “visually, there’s no barrier between the inside and the outside. There is, of course, a physical barrier made from glass and steel that protects an individual in a conditioned environment. However, the lack of boundaries is heavily influenced by natural light.1

Ando sees light as a dimensional body that we as humans are in constant interaction with. Naturally, lighting visually connects us to an awareness of ourselves in this world, and this experience can be summarized within the entrance of the museum alone. With a limiting view, The minimalist selection of the building construction materials was intentional due to Ando’s belief that architecture should stand silent behind art and nature. Ando frames the view with walls of daggering concrete that tell the viewer exactly where and how far they are allowed to look.

Partner - Gabriel Blake

Tadao Ando painted a sacred way that leads visitors on a journey to the arrival of Buddha. The sacred way is the choreographed movement a visitor will take that guides them to the sacred monument. Approaching from a distance, an individual is led by the folds and dips in the landscape. Their eyes follow the concentric rings of lavender plants to the peak of the tallest mound within the rippled terraformed landscape. The hill of lavender is similar to an ancient pyramid in how both terraced monuments mimic the landscape. Ando chose lavender to fuel how “man articulates the world through his body” by drawing attention to how the scent of lavender centers us to our bodies. This tallest mount is Tadao Ando’s Hill of The Budda. Tadao Ando buried the monumental statue of the Buddha in a concrete cavern, with dirt added on top to present the dome as a piece of the existing landscape. An oculus exposes the head of the Buddha to the sky. As an individual descends toward the threshold of the Hill of The Buddha, the exposed head slips out of sight and is eclipsed by the terraced dome. Ando framed sight lines by terraforming the landscape that tells the individual how far, and where they are allowed to look, whether for suspense or contemplation. The passenger slightly descends to the immediate arrival of the monument. The dome’s entrance is low and the cold atmosphere from within juxtaposes the open and bright air above. The cavernous entrance swallows the entering sunlight. Natural light becomes a method of wayfinding that allures the body to the statue of the Buddha. The concrete materiality of the walls produces a reverberation of every little sound, begging for silence whilst entering. The concrete makes the statue feel as though it was carved out from the rock of the Earth. After stepping forward, an individual’s eyes focus on the beacon of light penetrating its way into the cave where the statue of the Buddha lays. As an individual circulates from one interior space to another, they are met by both ceilings and walls cast in concrete. Ando’s intention for the architecture was to stay silent behind nature. Silence to Ando does not mean planar walls; instead, he designed the concrete to be cast with bends and folds to catch the atmospheric qualities of natural lighting. Sunlight diffuses naturally on the textured walls and interacts with the architecture harmoniously.

Time, Memory & Silence - Wentworth 2023

Team - Gabe Blake and Laura Pease; Professor - Meliti Dikeos