Stealth tactics; Tadao Ando has exchanged his trademark language with hhstyle: an urban space invader.

You would not be blamed for failing to recognise Tadao Ando's hand in this his latest work. More known for architectural set pieces that are as laden with ritual as they are with Euclidean geometric orchestration and the purist (some may say, pallid) use of concrete, along with other established master architects, Tadao Ando seems to have succumbed to the dent. While there have been accusations that this emerging attitude to form represents little more than crumpled thinking, as you may expect it comes with as many programmatic justifications as it does sculptural. Forms either mimic geology to create artificial landscapes, such as that evident at Yokohama (AR January 2003); or they emerge as quasi-functionalist responses to organisational programmes by vacuum-sealing complex three-dimensional volumetric diagram as at Seattle (AR October 2000). Or they can be more celestial, such as Libeskind's curiously absurd London Metropolitan University graduate centre, where (unnecessary) justifications become even more alien.

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However the architects choose to describe them, if justification is necessary at all, these new forms have certainly arrived. Territory is gradually being taken by forms so contorted that, just like their formal partners in aviation, they have somehow crossed our borders without identification. In a bold manoeuvre that may be seen as an urban assault, nothing seems to stick to these new forms, and with a confidence that deflects all criticism, a new architectural language is now being adopted by the most surprising individuals.

And, while some recognisable phrases may be the native tongue of last century's avant-garde (Libeskind, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Morphosis), for others the translation comes less naturally. So, how did Ando--master of the right angle, the arc, and the axis--derive this form?

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When discussing the project, the rationale comes as a direct response to Tokyo's unique urban condition. On a tight site located in a pedestrianised area close to the Omotesando Boulevard in the Harajuku district of Tokyo, two important factors influenced the design. First, a new road is planned that will eventually cut across a portion of the site limiting (by law) any structure to a steel or wooden frame and no more than two stories in height. Second, the site is made up of two areas, one leased for five years and the other for ten, with the main volume of the building restricted to the latter. In response to these conditions, Ando wanted to create an image of lightness; a lightness not expressed by the actual use of lightweight materials, but by the way the building was constructed and conceived. Steel plate and slit-like windows were therefore deployed to create a free form apparently liberated from the constraints of gravity, to conjure a sense of speed appropriate to a building being built temporarily on leased land. This shift in genre is of course less significant to Ando, who naturally resists any idea that (his) architecture is defined by style. He has long been fascinated by walls; in how walls in both rural and urban contexts can define new territories. Here the wall is steel, and that is perhaps the only significant design departure.

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Upon entering the space the interior does create a different world; a single volume space where white profile metal contrasts with the sleek external black facets of the 18mm plate steel. Trademark Ando concrete could not be resisted, in constructing the central core with razor sharp arises, and five split-level terraced floors provide ideal showroom spaces for luxury-imported furniture. In these manoeuvres, Ando cautiously reminds us that new ideas need to grow out of more established architectural philosophy. Here then he holds true to his hard-core modernist roots both in space and material with a series of interior spaces that are directly defined by the external form, with little or no interstitial space; true to form, and true to materials.

Ando is clearly very proud of this small new building, signing his business card with a well-rehearsed sketch of its distinctive silhouette, proving perhaps that the most solid established architectural heavyweight has the ability to demonstrate a lighter, more malleable, response to the city. And we should be prepared for more formal manipulation from Ando, who when stating that scale transcends concepts hinted that some larger schemes may also display this sculptural dexterity, a master still capable of engaging in the exchange of emerging formal architectural tendencies.

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