ABSTRACT
In the history of modern architecture, an active and ample criticism of all too conventional and standardized forms effectively voiced itself through the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto. Furthermore, as standardization and internationalization progressed, their ideas about the human value of architecture as well as about place as a genius loci, remained forgotten for some decades, but reappeared in the mid-1970s in several countries. This happened before the term Critical Regionalism was coined. Tadao Ando is the architect who, in Japan, consistently formulated non-modernist approaches reminiscent of those of the above “modernists of the second generation,” but which nevertheless bear differences. I want to show in this chapter, how anti-modern architectural counter movements remained constant to some extent over the last 50 years, though they had to change their strategies at the moment the face of “international reality” was changing. The juxtaposition of Aalto and Ando serves this purpose. The clarifications of Ando’s architectural philosophy that I provide in the second part of the chapter need to be understood against this background.
