He has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field. He visited buildings designed by renowned architects like Le Corbusier, Ludwig Miles Van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn before returning to Osaka in 1968 and established his own design studio, Tado Ando Architect and Associates. He works primarily in exposed cast-in-place concrete. He recently completed a concrete three-story house on the edge of a cliff in southern Sri Lanka for a married couple.