The story goes that Tadao Ando had become interested in building through watching carpenters work on his family home as a child. Then he saw a book on Le Corbusier in a second-hand bookshop, he saved up for it and it was through tracing the drawings in that book that he learnt architecture. Like his idol, Corb, Ando was self-taught. Now, it is chunky blockbuster books on the Japanese one-time boxer, which populate the shelves of show apartments, five-star hotels and upmarket design bookstores.
