Honpukuji Water Temple: A Pure Land Space Beneath the Water’s Surface

This is a Buddhist temple that was built on a hillside on Awaji Island as part of a small Shingon-sect temple. 



In approaching the design of his first temple project, Ando sought inspiration from his travels through India, China, and other regions of Asia and came to the idea of incorporating water.

Additionally, he sought to create a building that is of its time by combining contemporary technology with a modern architectural style while doing away with the emblematic grand roof of traditional Japanese temples.


This gave rise to a temple unlike any before it, topped not with a grand roof but with a flat plane of water that carries flowering lotuses and reflects the surrounding scenery. 

To enter the Water Temple, one must first walk along a stone path leading from the entrance of the temple precinct and climb a narrow path up a gentle wooded slope. One will then find themselves facing a concrete wall rising from a white gravel-filled forecourt.

Beyond the opening in the wall is a second, gently curving wall, which follows the path through the alley-like passageway between the two concrete surfaces. When one turns the corner at the end of the wall, the view opens up across the oval pool of water and the surrounding landscape.

Ando has woven together a variety of scenes into a short span of time by making use of the topography to skillfully set up transitions between the artificial and natural, the abstract and concrete, and stillness and movement.


The approach sequence allows one to both visually and physically experience the sensation of gradually transitioning from the realm of everyday life into a sacred space.

The interior of the temple is entered by descending a stairway that cuts through the center of the pool of water.

The main hall is a circular space that is circumscribed by vermilion-painted wood walls and partitioned by lattice screens that separate the outer and inner sanctuaries.



Taking inspiration from the Jododo Hall built at the Jodoji Temple during the Kamakura period, Ando incorporated a light court behind the inner sanctuary. The sunlight brought in through the light court reflects off the painted walls and saturates the space with vermillion.

At sunset, when the light shines in from the direction of where the Pure Land (Jodo) is believed to exist, the intensity of the vermillion grows even stronger, and the hall truly becomes a space of light that calls to mind the Pure Land.

It is said that during the inauguration of the completed building, everyone in the hall spontaneously put their hands together in prayer at the sight of the light from the setting sun glowing like the Buddha’s halo.