Tadao Andåo at Naoshima

Sited on an elevated cape at the southern end of this largely unspoiled Island in the Inland Sea of Japan, the Naoshima Island Art Complex represents Aando at his most stunning.

At turns rational and unpredictable, his projects, such as the Chichu Art Museum featured here, embody spaces that encourage contemplation and demonstrate a love for essential forms.

His use of ordinary and standard building materials - wood, glass, concrete, steel - is highly idiosyncratic, frequently surprising, and reveals an affinity for the natural world as coupled with a reverence for that which is personal and very human.

Among the handful of great, living, world-class architects, Tadao Aando is particularly noted for work that elegantly combines the sensual and ethereal, the pragmatic and poetic.