Ando Museum

The Ando Museum is a museum on Naoshima, an island of Japan, which showcases the history of Japanese architect Tadao Ando and Naoshima as a whole. One of Ando's many designed buildings on the island, it is housed in a century-old "traditional wooden house" with a concrete interior of his design.^[1]

In renovating a century-old house in the Honmura Area of Naoshima, Ando preserved its traditional exterior made of wood, but placed a concrete structure inside of it, as a means of establishing oppositions between past and present, light and dark, wood and concrete.^[2]

Following its completion, a press preview for the Ando Museum's unveiling was held on March 9, 2013, during which Soichiro Fukutake of the Fukutake Foundation stated that the museum was a culmination of the idea that art should create that which does not yet exist, rather than destroying or overwriting what exists.^[3]

A few days later, the Ando Museum opened on March 12, 2013.^[3] Since then, it has shown Ando's photographs, models, and drawings kept throughout his career as an architect.^[4] In line with Ando's architectural style, however, the building is intended to be an experience unto itself, rather than simply the space within which other experiences, such an exhibition, are contained.^[2]