Tadao Ando's First English Memoir 'Towards Light' Traces a Boxer's Path to Pritzker Glory

At 85, Tadao Ando has released his first memoir translated into English, Towards Light: A Philosophy of Life and Architecture, published by Scribe Publications at £25 with translation by Polly Barton. The book recounts how the Pritzker laureate spent a brief period as a professional boxer at 17 in Osaka before turning to architecture, a parallel he draws explicitly: both pursuits, he says, are battles against one's own fear requiring self-reliance. Ando, born into a working-class family amid postwar Osaka's ruins, could not afford university and taught himself architecture from books at night, opening a practice in a cheap rented room in 1969. His first built work was the Tomishima House in 1973; the Row House in Sumiyoshi, also called Azuma House, followed in 1976 in Osaka and brought his first major critical breakthrough. Honors include the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2002, Japan's Order of Culture in 2010 and the Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia in 2015. Ando told Wallpaper* that writing led him away from architecture, and that readers expecting architectural theory may be surprised; he abandoned chronological organization and wrote freely instead. Landmarks referenced include the Church of Light in Ibaraki, Osaka (1989) and The Children's Book Forest in Nakanoshima, Osaka (2020). He hopes readers close the book with a sense of hope and the courage to try something new.