Traveling Around the Spaces of Prayers that Catches People's Wishes

Tadao Ando has designed numerous buildings of varying scales in various settings, from small homes embedded in the city to expansive public facilities that extend out into the landscape.
 
The churches, temples, and other spaces of prayer that he has designed reflect particularly strongly his architectural philosophy of incorporating nature while carrying on modern architecture’s approach of creating geometric spatial compositions.

A single cross rises from the water against the backdrop of the magnificent natural landscape. The unchanging cross sets up a beautiful contrast with the water’s surface, which continuously changes with the seasons and time of day.

Ando conceived the architecture as “a device for becoming one with nature”, where one can experience Hokkaido’s rich natural environment.

The geometries of the L-shaped wall forming the approach path and the two square volumes delineate the spaces within the vast landscape and help sharpen the senses of visitors. 

The glass sliding door of the chapel dynamically joins the interior and exterior spaces, while the expanse of water extending beyond the cross creates a landscape where architecture and nature exist as one.

A colonnade filled with soft light filtering in through the vaulted frosted glass ceiling. The tubular space makes you aware of the pleasant breeze as you approach the chapel.


Carefully sited so as not to harm the existing trees, the building is composed of a chapel, bell tower, colonnade, and freestanding L-shaped walls.

In contrast to the glass colonnade, the concrete-enclosed chapel contains a pleasantly dramatic shadowed space with contrasting highlights created by the light brought in through the openings.

A glowing cross shining in the darkness. The cross-shaped opening in the front wall illuminates a space of limited light that evokes the Romanesque monasteries Ando once admired.

Signifying God’s presence, the light creates a variety of expressions within the concrete space as it changes constantly with the seasons and weather.

Realized by the power of the faith of its devotees and the will of the many people involved in its construction, the church continues to serve as a gathering place where people can offer their prayers in peace.

If light signifies the presence of God in a church, what could light represent in a temple? What Ando chose to express with light in his first work of temple architecture was the light of the Western Pure Land.

Light is neither colorless nor transparent; it can be saturated with various colors. Here, Ando brings the light into the main sanctuary from the west, where the Pure Land is believed to lie, and lets the light reflect off the vermilion-painted walls and columns to saturate the space with red.

The sanctuary is housed beneath an elliptical pond where lotuses grow. Breaking from the conventions of Japan’s traditional large-roofed temple architecture, the building’s design creates a landscape that melds with its surroundings. What Ando aimed to inherit was not the traditional form of a temple but rather its essential spirituality.

Ando’s concept for this project to redesign a temple with a 250-year-long history was to create a floating wooden hall enveloped in a soft light.


While the main hall has been built using laminated timber and modern construction methods, its simple, beautiful structure that visualizes the flows of the forces inherits the spirit of traditional Japanese architecture.

The light reflected off the surrounding water is gently filtered into the hall through the finely spaced vertical wood screens lining all sides of the building and the wooden lattice screens sheltering the inner sanctuary. The space was designed as a place for people to gather.

You might question your eyes when you first come across this surreal sight of a lavender-covered hill with the head of an enormous Buddha peeking out from its summit.

In response to his client’s request to enhance the appeal of a 13.5-meter-tall Buddha statue built 15 years earlier, Ando came up with the surprising idea to conceal all but the Buddha’s head with a hill covered in lavenders.

Inside the hill, there is a tunnel that leads to the base of the Buddha. When you emerge from the dim passage, you can gaze up at the Buddha bathed in the light raining down from above.

The grand landscape created through this project goes beyond the conventional scale of architecture.

A prayer space for world peace that transcends all religions and denominations, built to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of UNESCO’s founding.


The design was born by thoroughly eliminating all superfluous elements in order to bring out the fundamental power of the space. The cylindrical space embodies the concept of “One World”, and the light shining in through slits in its ceiling reaches out to people’s hearts.

The floors and surrounding water feature have been finished with stones that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to encourage people to think about peace.

The composition of restrained materials and forms becomes “a spiritual space” by being imbued with the abstracted natural elements. The space offers a place for people to gather and embraces their thoughts and prayers.