The image you see, with the caption “Kumamoto Station and canopy by Tadao Ando” is from the following page:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/91848110
Tadao Ando is an extremely famous architect but, apparently, he has a reputation for cost overruns:
“Ando, the tabloid alleges, appears to be a habitual overspender. As a case in point, he was brought in to undertake the reconstruction of JR Kumamoto Station, which needed to be rebuilt to accommodate the new Kyushu Shinkansen that began operations from spring of 2011. The project was to be completed by 2018. Entrusted to the design by Kumamoto Prefecture, Ando provided an initial estimate of 560 million yen for the new station. The costs since soared nearly six fold to 3 billion yen and, horrified by the excess, the Kumamoto assembly raised a fuss and finally got an agreement to whittle down the final price to 2.4 billion yen—still nearly five times the original figure.”
This example from Kumamoto has come up recently in the news because Ando is the chairman of the Olympic Stadium Design Committee, which is now receiving a lot of scrutiny over the National Stadium Project. The stadium is to be a constructed for the 2020 olympics but the government has recently decided to scrap the original plan and start over because the construction costs were estimated to be much higher than originally proposed.
#Kumamoto #Ando #Tadao #安藤忠雄