I believe three elements are necessary to crystallise architecture. One is authentic materials, or to put it another way, materials that possess substantiality. The material can be, for example, unadorned concrete or unpainted wood. The second element is a pure geometry, which provides the foundation or framework that enables a work of architecture to have presence. It might be a mass in the form of a Platonic solid but more often is a three-dimensional frame. The last element is nature. By this I do not mean nature in the raw but instead a -man-made nature- chaotic nature that has been given order by man, or order abstracted from nature. It is light, sky, and water made abstract. When nature in such guise is introduced into a building composed of authentic materials and a pure geometry, architecture itself is rendered abstract by nature. Architecture acquires power and becomes radiant only when materials, geometry and nature are integrated.

1983-2000 tadao ando, EL Croquis, Madrid, 2000.