2021 is the year of Tadao Ando for Domus, which thus welcomes the fourth of the ten internationally renowned architects to lead the contents of 10 issues of the magazine for a whole year. The 10x10x10 program, which accompanies Domus towards its 100th anniversary, thus sees the first Pritzker Prize among its editors. Coming out with the December issue, edited by Fulvio Irace and entitled Recovering Italy, are the monograph of the Japanese architect (Osaka, born in 1941) and his Manifesto, dedicated to eternity.

“All things must one day weather and crumble. It could be said that architectural history is a trajectory of challenges against this truth in search of the eternal,” says Tadao Ando in his Manifesto. “I would like to make eternity, an idea that humans have been pursuing since time immemorial, the theme of Domus 2021.”

The architect of the Church of Light in Ibaraki, Punta della Dogana in Venice, the Armani Silos in Milan and the more recent Bourse de Commerce in Paris, thus gives a first impression of what he will tell in his Domus, together with the complexities of the contemporary world, in the relationship of architecture, design and art with society, technology and the most recent pandemic. “We are in the middle of an upward sloping graph of significant change (...). These shifts will likely continue to intensify and create a new world that we cannot even begin to fathom”.

But Ando tells how we human beings are fragile, made of flesh and bone, and we are part of nature. Ando will speak through the magazine of eternity precisely because in the uncertainty of the future we must approach what remains unchanged in architecture, its essential value: “to create a habitat for the human spirit, to hold memory and history, and to foster culture through the urban landscape”.

“We are honoured to have Tadao Ando become part of our team ,” says Maria Giovanna Mazzocchi, President of Editoriale Domus welcoming the Pritzker Prize 1995. “I am certain that the lucid world-view Tadao Ando has held throughout his career will be a great opportunity for Domus readers and the civic society that gathers around our publication. Like Ando, we too are convinced that architecture is able to change society”.

Walter Mariotti, editorial director of Domus, states that “2020 has further reminded us how necessary and urgent it is to rethink the ways and forms of associated life, from the management of public space to the way we work and move around. To be able to count on the vision of Tadao Ando, who besides being an architect of immense success is an all-round intellectual, is a great honour for Domus”.

Opening image: Tadao Ando. Photo Kinji Kanno