Tadao Ando : Karaza Theatre (Japan)

Tadao Ando works primarily in exposed cast-in-place concrete and is renowned for an exemplary craftsmanship which invokes a Japanese sense of materiality, junction and spatial narrative through the pared aesthetics if international modernism. Characteristics of his work include large expanses of unadorned architectural concrete walls combined with wooden or stone floors and large windows. Active natural elements, like sun, rain, and wind are a distinctive inclusion to his style.






Ideas on Theatre - Traditional and Modern
Basically, architects as creators have to get excited about going to see their completed buildings. You really cannot lose that spirit. You know how children make toys? When they are making a toy they don't know what it will look like. But when it is built they get very excited.


In a modern theatre you never know what the actors condition and feelings are because there are too many layers of manipulation between the actor and audience. Acting becomes interesting when we, as an audience, can feel the  actors themselves. The ideal size of a theatre is one in which the audience can see with their natural vision, hear with their own ears and feel with their own senses. Ando believes that there exists an ideal size for a theatre where the actors and the audience can still communicate without technological manipulation. 


In principle, whatever the environmental conditions are, we should be able to control our lives with our own bodies and minds. This is where Tadao Ando started to conceive this project.


Since we live in a society that relies on mass communication, theaters must be able to house as large an audience as possible. Ando wanted to question what theatre is really about. Not saying that all theaters should be designed this way this is Ando's response to modern theatre in general. The feeling of what theatre might have originally been or meant motivated Ando to design this theatre.


Karaza Theatre
The use of scaffolding as a simple assembly procedure was used most notably by Tadao Ando, throughout the design of the Karaza Theatre, which was built in 15 days in 1987. Ando designed the theatre to be portable, with a vast majority of its structural elements made from locally sourced standard components.
It will be used as a temporary theatre in Asakusa and then at a drama festival in the Kansai district, also maybe used by Issey Miyake in New York.