[This was written as a paper for my Global Architecture class as a commentary on essays by Jin Baek on this piece of architecture]

Tadao Ando’s Church of the Light is a stunning piece of architecture and has been the topic of many analyses by scholars in architecture, engineering, philosophy, religious studies, linguistics, and beyond. One of these scholars, Jin Baek who is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University, has dedicated much of his career, to focusing on examining the semiotics, phenomenology, and deconstructive characteristics of Ando’s work, especially his religious architecture.

After a deep dive into the research, I am less convinced that the “spatial emptiness in the Church of the Light is based on painful awareness of the state of modern religious art,” (Baek, 2017, p. 8) and more apt to believe that this design follows Ando’s phenomenological approach to architecture in general.

Tadao Ando, as you will read, is an architect who is almost solely focused on creating spaces that leave lasting impressions on the people who interact with them. As he’s outlined in many interviews:

The real importance of architecture is its ability to move people’s hearts deeply. I am always trying to establish spaces where people can gather and interact with one another.‌ (Ando, 2016)

Ando also referenced his approach to designing religious architecture, in particular, in a 2018 interview in Sufi Journal, saying:

When designing religious architecture, I always aim to create a space which can continue to inspire people for many years. As a method of doing this, I often employ water, light, and wind to create an architecture which evolves and changes with its environment. When natural elements are abstracted from the raw power of the earth, it can approach a sacred plane. In traditional Japanese architecture, shakkei (borrowed landscape) is often used as a way of framing nature and creating a permeable boundary between interior and exterior. Spiritual spaces, in a sense, perform in the same way as a Japanese tea room. In the Japanese tea room, importance does not lie in the floor, walls, or ceiling, but the space of shintai (nothingness). Nothingness is a means of finding the self and life’s richness. (Ando, 2018, p. 55)

So, is emptiness/nothingness a comment on modern Christianity or is it a way that Ando incorporates his Japanese sensibility into his work overall? My focus is on the latter.

Model of the Church of Light by ***FAB365 3D Printing***

The Church of the Light

Completed in 1989 in the small city of Ibaraki, Japan, the Church of the Light (or Ibaraki Kasugaoka Church) was the third Christian structure Tadao Ando designed and built in a span of fewer than 5 years. Commissioned by the United Church of Christ in Japan, this parish was overseen at the time by the pastor Noburu Karukome, who “had requested a house of worship with a connection to the earth.” (Christian & Keiko, 2011)

Situated on a corner lot in a residential area, it is near the Expo ‘70 Commemorative Park and Osaka University, this small chapel is only 6 meters (19’ - 8 ¼”) by 18 meters (~60’), or 113 m2 (1216 ft2) and would hold fewer than 100 people at a service comfortably.

In 1999, the Chuch of Light Sunday School building was built next to the chapel (Kroll, 2011).

According to the official website, the church is no longer allowing tours or casual visitors and it looks like, due to funds and aging caretakers, there are no longer services, either.

Materials

There are two main materials used in the construction of the Church of the Light: concrete and wood. However, just mentioning the raw materials would be doing the description an injustice.

Beginning with concrete, Tadao Ando’s version isn’t the standard concrete used in modern structures. For one, it is not meant to be hidden behind cladding or decorative finishes.

“Ando Concrete” as it is famously known in the architectural and construction world is so distinctive, rendering software material banks carry it as a branded style of concrete finish

Ando has taken a humble material (in his words, “a ubiquitous, ordinary material”) and elevated it to luxury status through a craftsperson’s approach to working with it:

Making Ando-caliber concrete is not for the faint of heart…Like most architectural concrete, it is made of water, cement, sand, and small rocks blended with chemicals and slag, a by-product of steelmaking that lends the final result its creamy finish. The material is trucked to the site, where it is pumped into a formwork—essentially a mold made of large wooden panels. Other architects might use bare panels of oak or fir, but those woods typically transfer their grain to the concrete as it dries. To avoid this, Ando has since the 1970s used plywood coated in plastic, which imparts a smooth surface. These panels are painstakingly connected so that the edges fit together tightly 6. Each mold is also pierced through with a series of steel rods, called form ties, which keep its two sides together 7. The form ties are in turn held in place by blue-plastic cones, which protrude into the wet concrete 8. When the formwork is removed, the seams between the wood panels leave behind Ando’s iconic lines, while the plastic cones produce his trademark holes, which are partially plugged with mortar. (Bosker, 2017)

After being removed from the moulds, the cast-in-place pieces are sanded until they are “smooth-as-silk”. Unlike more raw concrete finishes with rough surfaces, the smooth surfaces of Ando’s concrete blocks reflect and emphasize the light he so loves to use in his designs.

His use of wood for the floors and furniture is also done with thoughtfulness. In a 2016 documentary, Ando expressed why he used natural wood for this project, even if there were materials that were easier to upkeep:

"Contrary to plastic, which is used everywhere, the church's floor is made out of wood and has to be maintained. The maintenance work is done by us and the church congregation. This is how an emotional bond emerges to the building." (Ando, 2015)

Key Features

The church consists of a triple cube sliced through at a 15-degree angle by a freestanding wall, which defines the chapel and its triangular space. Entering through an opening in the angled wall, one has to turn 180 degrees to be aligned with the chapel. The floor descends in stages towards the altar, behind which is a wall penetrated by horizontal and vertical openings that form a crucifix. Both the floor and the benches are made of low-cost wooden scaffolding planks, which, with their rough-textured surface, emphasize the simple and honest character of the space. (Pare, 2017)

Aside from the materials, the floor-to-ceiling and side-to-side sliced openings in the altar wall that form a cross are what make this architecture remarkable. As a Professor of Systematic Theology, Bert Daelemans writes in the journal Faith and Form:

The entire sanctuary wall is a religious symbol: extending over the entire height and width of the concrete wall (8 by 6 meters) a Latin cross is excised. What do we look at? The wall or the cross, which is not really there? This cross is present as absence, because it is cut out of the wall. As Christian symbol it is there, that is, not less but more than there. For a Christian, this could be a magnificent symbol of death and resurrection. For Frampton, it is also a denial in favor of a cosmogonic spirituality. All of Ando’s churches are imbued with this conjunction in which both Christian iconography and its Japanese “other” are simultaneously evoked, although the evocation of the divine depends on the revealed ineffability of nature rather than on the presentation of conventional symbolism. [emphasis added]” (p.25)

This is the “simultaneously visible and invisible” (Baek, 2010, p. 10) effect that leaves an impression on the visitor. However, rather than being just an outright comment on the symbol of the cross itself, there seems to be more at work here.

One feature is never isolated from the other in Ando’s work and this is very true for the Church of the Light. The full length and width span of the subtracted form of the cross is on a wall that is at a lower elevation than the point of entry for the congregation so that a visitor entering the Church will encounter the outreached arms of the cross at a very welcoming eye level.

In this way, the light streaming in from the opening connects directly with the visitor rather than creating an overbearing symbol that asks for sublimation. The visitor and the light, which is part of the architecture, are now joined. As he writes in an essay, Shintai and Space, published in a 1995 collection:

My intent is not to express the nature of the material itself but to employ it to establish the single intent of the space. When light is drawn into it, cool, tranquil space surrounded by a clearly finished architectural element is liberated to become a soft, transparent area transcending materials. It becomes a living space that is one with the people inhabiting it. The actual walls cease to exist, and the body (shintai) of the beholder is aware only of the surrounding space. (p. 453)

The Japanese word shintai is one I will explore in the next section, but it is more than “the body”. It translates to God-body. As Ando writes in another essay in the collection entitled From Self-Enclosed Modern Architecture Towards Universality:

Space attains a sense of transparency when the current moving from the level of abstractions to the level of concrete, and the current moving from the level of the whole to the level of the individual parts flow together and become replete from end to end with a single creative intention. (ibid., 448)

It is not just one of the features that create the experience, it is the combination of them. The opening in the altar wall that emanates light, the downward slope of the room from the entrance to the pulpit (putting the pastor below the level of the congregation and the arms of the cross at eye level), the labyrinthic journey into the church, the smooth-as-silk, but relatively unadorned walls (vessel for the light), the rustic natural wide-plank wood floors and furniture (humble), the warm bodies contrasted with the cool concrete, and even the orientation of the building on the site itself all come together to create a space where that is “emotionally stimulating.” (Baek, 2009)

About Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando was born on September 13, 1941, to a working-class family in Osaka as one of a pair of twin boys. At a very young age, he was separated from his twin brother and raised by his great-grandmother on his father’s side. Ando was a smart kid, but a “mediocre student” (Cho, 2015) and, thus, dabbled with various career paths, including boxing and even driving a truck. He was, however, quite interested in both math and carpentry, which piqued an overall interest in architecture. This interest grew and grew, but because Ando’s family was poor, applying to architectural school wasn’t really in the cards.

However, his “fighting” personality pushed him to pursue his chosen career without formal instruction. Instead, he voraciously read and studied architecture in the real world, travelling first around Japan, then to the West to learn all he could about the art of designing great buildings. He loved reading and books, as evidenced by the volumes and volumes of books that line the many levels of his professional offices:

Tadao Ando’s Osaka offices with every wall and partition filled with books

His enormous appetite for reading and learning led to Ando being an incredibly thoughtful, well-rounded intellectual, which he also associated with the great architects who influenced him such as Le Corbusier, Louis Khan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. (Bailey, 2015)

Much of my pay check at the time was reserved for expensive and imported design books. I would flip through their pages until they were falling apart. (Ando, 2020)

Over his 50-year career, he’s been a prolific designer with over 170 projects built with his name on them. This illustrious self-made vocation has resulted in a global reputation for excellence, mandates for incredibly iconic buildings in 13 countries, over 20 awards of excellence, and a lasting legacy for being an incredible artist and pioneer in architecture. All of this is from a self-taught man born into a working-class family.

Design Influences

His modest upbringing and humble beginnings have influenced his approach to design but they aren’t the only influences on his unique style.

Though the designs Ando creates are remarkably simple, the level of thought he puts into his work is not. His approach is informed by many factors alongside the aforementioned upbringing and love of reading. These influences include his Japanese origins, bringing a sensibility that is very much grounded in the culture, history, religion, philosophy, and architecture of his home country balanced with what he has learned from the history and masters of Western architecture and design.

Japanese Culture

There is an interesting level of multiplicity in Tadao Ando that imbues everything he does. This is also a very Japanese (and particularly Buddhist/Shintoist) approach. Throughout interviews and presentations, Ando neither confirms nor denies the influence of his culture on his work, but this may be due to how imbued his culture is for him.

In 2016, he says in an interview that “I wish to embody spaces that comprehend Japanese sensitivities in modern architecture,” but in another interview in 2020, he says, “ I do not deliberately express Japaneseness in my architecture, but if others feel this way when they see it, maybe it is an unconscious expression of this inherited view of nature.”

Yet, his essays that appear in the book Tadao Ando: complete works by Phaidon Press, are filled with his professions of love for Japanese architecture and approach to design. He mentions how “the spirit of Sukiya style” (p. 447) is part of his work and that the “simplicity of composition” (p. 448) in Japanese farmhouses are also part of his work.

Sukiya style, otherwise known as Sukiya-zukuri, is most often associated with the design of Japanese teahouses.

It originated from 茶室 (chashitsu or tea room/hut) used for wabi-style tea ceremony, which was cemented by Sen no Rikyu, the legendary Tea Master in the 16th century. As the word “wabi” suggests, wabi-style tea ceremony was the culmination of “wabi-sabi” culture, and chashitsu architecture was the manifestation of wabi-sabi philosophy. (Abundance Zero, 2022)

Ando has incorporated a lot of the concepts of Sukiya-zukuri as I’ll go into in my own analysis of the Church of the Light as well as his other religious buildings.

Buddhism & Shintoism

The two main religions of Japan are Shinto and Buddhism with only 1% of Japanese practicing Christianity. (Akito, 2019) Shinto is Japan’s native religion and was quite enshrined when Buddhism arrived (via China and Korea) in the 6th Century. (Cartwright, 2017)

Japanese Buddhism follows the school of Mahayana Buddhism, which originated in China (Chan Buddhism), and the largest sect of Buddhist practice is Jōdo Buddhism according to 2021 statistics from the Japanese government. Though “Ando is no liturgist,” (Daelemans, 2014) his approach aligns most closely with the Zen Buddhism principles, including:

Shogyō-Mujō ( 諸行無常) - the impermanence of things
Shōhō-muga (諸法無我) - there is no self
Munen Muso (無念夢想) - non-attachment
Utsuroi (移ろい) - evanescence or fading away

Unlike Western culture, which focuses on ownership, permanence, individualism, and control of our environment, Japanese culture is rooted in Buddhism and Shinto (which, is to say, most of it), believes that attachment to things and permanence is what will lead to suffering and celebrates impermanence, transience, and evanescence.

The root of many of these concepts is mu (無), which translates to “emptiness” or “void”. The physical world is impermanent, thus empty. I am impermanent, thus empty. Buildings are impermanent, thus empty. But this type of thinking is not nihilistic by any means. Instead, grasping the emptiness and nothingness means that we’re free from the burdens of ownership. Instead of having arrived, we are always moving towards.

The concept of mu as it relates to spatial design is combined with two other concepts - en 縁 and ma 間. (Ek, 2022) En is a concept that means edge or connection and is found in words like engawa 縁側, which is the word describing the porch or veranda that connects rooms in a Japanese house.

Ma is a Japanese word that means pause, but is very loaded with other meanings (which is common for many of these words):

Ma combines door and sun. Together these two characters depict a door through the crevice of which the sunlight peeps in.
We see in this symbol not only the structure of a door but a door that is open for the light to come in, thus enabling growth and sparking creativity. This is Ma – the space between the edges, the space and time in which we experience life.
Ma is filled with nothing but possibility. It speaks of silence as opposed to sound, of stillness and opposed to motion. It is the momentary pause in speech needed to convey meaningful words, the silence between the notes that makes the music…
In that stillness, free of noise, we connect on a soul level. There is a need for Ma in every aspect and every day of our lives. (Canning, 2014)

Where mu leaves space, ma creates possibility and en creates the transition between the two (or a shroud that allows for the transition).

Japanese Architecture & Gardens

An example of a Japanese garden with stepping stones

The Japanese tea ceremony doesn’t begin when you sit down for tea. The ceremony is incorporated into the journey you take to get to the teahouse:

Passing through the gate of the garden, the visitor follows a winding footpath through a garden space called the roji, which connects to a dark pine forest or bamboo grove. The teahouse stands at the end of the footpath, but is not immediately visible. The path is dark, monotonous, and long. This is the first aspect of the Ma of space-time to be noted. Walking along the footpath to the teahouse, the visitor is given no indication as to when or where the path wnd, while the monotonousness of the journey seems to make the time pass more slowly. There is almost nothing to see in the plainness of the woodland, and there is nothing for the visitor to do other than proceed quickly. (Kodama, 2017, p. 180)

What Kodama describes above is just the first leg of a multi-leg journey to get to the teahouse. The second leg of the journey involves a zig-zag detour through gardens that slow the visitor down to take in the beauty. The third leg is the navigation of stepping stones, further slowing down the visitor due to the tricky footing.

Finally, there is a step up onto a platform to find an entrance (called nijiriguchi). This is no code-compliant Western entrance (and definitely not ADA-compliant). The entrance is narrow with a raised threshold and lowered head so that the visitor has to carefully step over the threshold whilst bowing their head. All of this is intentionally designed to slow time for the visitor:

When moving from the extremely narrow entranceway into the room to enjoy tea, the inside of the room feels bigger than it actually is. Different perceptions of space and time can be created by interposing spaces like this, in other words by utilizing the Ma of space-time. (ibid., p. 181)

This indirect, quite perilous journey is a device for creating the transition between one world and the next. Ando, as you will read, uses a version of this device in all of his work.

Western Architecture

When discussing his informal education by experience, Tadao Ando recounts his travels to Europe to take in the pillars of Western architecture:

I decided I had to go to Europe, and when I was 24, I went. I visited the Pantheon and the Parthenon. But I didn’t know how to take the Parthenon. At the Parthenon, you see only those columns. I was impressed by the space that the Pantheon had, but at the Parthenon, it’s just columns. I didn’t know how to understand them. I started from there. (Ando, 2015a)

There were a few interviews in which he mentioned his distaste for columns. Though his commentary on columns is almost comical, I realized why columns didn’t compute for Ando. They don’t make sense in a Japanese context for a few reasons.

Number one, they’re showy and ostentatious, especially those on Ancient Greek structures. In vernacular Japanese architecture, walls and windows and doors and all of the “building envelope” components take a back seat to what is contained within the envelope: namely the wind and light. As he writes:

The importance of architecture resides not in individual elements such as wall, pillar and floor or ceiling. But the actual invisible space inside is the essence of architecture. (Ando, 2001a, p. 20)

Not only do walls take a back seat, but they also don’t exist philosophically:

When they agree with my aesthetic image, walls become abstract, are negated, and approach the ultimate limit of space. Their actuality is lost, and only the space they enclose gives a sense of really existing. Under these conditions, volume and projected light alone float into prominence as hints of the spatial composition. (Ando, 1995, p. 448)

In his mind, the skeletal structure of a building merely serves the purpose to contain the volume, which is the second reason why columns don’t make sense for Ando. A wall creates the container and demarcates the transition from the outside world (where there is chaos and stress) to the inside world (where the occupant can find peace). A column fails on this function:

The air of my design is, while embodying my own architectural theories, to impart rich meaning into spaces through such things as natural elements and the many aspects of daily life. Such things as light and wind only have meaning when they are introduced inside a house in a form cut off from the outside world. (ibid., p. 446)

There are many additional Western architectural concepts that confound Ando (the need to conquer nature, for instance), however, he still found much inspiration from more modern Western architects such as Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

It was Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute that inspired the iconic cast-in-place concrete panels that Ando would become so known for.

And the light that shone through the mosaic of windows in Le Corbusier’s Chapel of Notre Dame-de-Haut in Ronchamp, France, would become a very core inspiration for his concept of the Church of the Light.

Light wells in the Chapel of Notre Dame-de-Haut

Emptiness and Empty Cross by Baek

Jin Baek, the author of Emptiness and Empty Cross: Tadao Ando’s Church of the Light, has written extensively about Tadao Ando as well as the topic of emptiness. In this article, which came out a year after the publication of his book titled Nothingness: Tadao Ando's Christian Sacred Space, he focuses on theology and the symbolism/symbolic nature of the cross at the front of the chapel.

As he outlines, there are two main theses he focuses on for this essay:

…spatial emptiness as the language for Christian architecture in the intellectual context of the 20th century, and second, the ontological shift in the interpretation of the cross from crucifix to a thing that transcends the contemporary dichotomy between the minimalistic and the figurative, between architecture that is silent and architecture that speaks. (2010, p. 3)

After reading and listening to multiple interviews with Tadao Ando as well as exploring Japanese concepts and culture, I disagree with Baek’s analysis. Rather than being concerned with religious symbols or icons, I believe that Ando was focused on the experience for visitors.

Ando doesn’t appear to express any positive OR negative sentiments towards Christianity or the stories and teachings of the religion, even as there are Buddhists, such as Daisetz T. Suzuki opposed to the “cross as a symbol of cruelty or of inhumanity.” (Baek, 2009, p. 65)

In fact, one only needs to look at Ando’s other religious projects - both Christian and Buddhist - to see a pattern where, rather than commenting on symbols or ideologies, he’s incorporating a very “Japanese” sense of ritual into every project in order to elevate the user’s experience and “to open the hearts of the people and move them in such a way that they are glad to be on earth.” (Ando, 2015)

Expanding on the phenomenological ideas

To start, I want to outline the Japanese concepts that come up time and again in Tadao Ando’s work and how they play out in his designs, whether for a Christian church or a Buddhist temple (and beyond):

#1. Walls that “do not exist” (mu 無)

In the traditional Japanese house, the wall does not actually exist. Of course, walls were used. But their aim was not to express the simplicity of the wood, paper, earth and straw of which they were made. According to the traditional Japanese interpretation, architecture is always at one with nature and attempts to isolate and freeze at a point in time nature as it exists in its organic metamorphoses. In other words, it is an architecture reduced to the extremes of simplicity and an aesthetic so devoid of actuality and attributes that it approaches theories of Ma, or nothingness. Further connections with nature are effected by the subtle transformations caused in part by delicate contrasts of light and shade. In all these connections it is the wall, made as light and thin as possible, that permits - or perhaps more accurately evokes - space. (Ando, 1995a, p. 447)

If the walls do not exist, or rather, they only exist to contain the light and wind within and delineate the line between inside and outside, the “slit” (as Baek puts it) or opening that makes the cross of light is actually the volume, not the void. It’s not empty at all but filled with light and wind. The concrete wall around the cross only serves as its vessel.

Without walls, there would be nothing to shape the light, but the point isn’t the wall, the point is the light. The wall is what is empty, it is mu 無 (nothing) and the cross is ma 間, the experience. It’s not about the shape of the cross, per se, but as a Christian building, this is a perfect way to deliver natural elements into the space, marrying an important Christian symbol with an important Japanese notion.

#2. Passages to a Separate World (en 縁)

I wish to embody spaces that comprehend Japanese sensitivities in modern architecture. For instance, the continuity between interior and outside space is one of the typical characteristics of traditional Japanese architecture. I often incorporate the space between inside and outside in my architectural proposals, which is similar to the traditional veranda known as engawa. (Ando, 2018)

In almost every project, Tadao Ando incorporated some sort of passage from outside to inside that would cause the visitor to slow down and/or pause, shift time and space, or create some sort of overall transformation. As covered in a previous section, the roji 露地 (garden path) concept is another technique to create this transition and Ando uses this in the Chapel on Mount Rokko as I’ll show in the next section. In the case of the Church of the Light, though there isn’t much space to create the full garden path experience, there is still a transitional effect:

(O)ne should note the labyrinthine passageway leading to the empty chapel of the Church of the Light...In situating the church, Ando oriented it so that it may be accessed via a small street to the east of the site. While this is partly a response to the site that slopes up to the north, it is also an architectural tactic to lengthen the passageway to the church. One walks along the naturally formed slope, and turns around at the north-east corner to walk up another ramp—this time a rather short one. He turns around again to move along a levelled land before one enters the triangular zone of threshold in semi-darkness, a zone formed by a diagonal wall piercing the west wall of the church. (Baek, 2009, p. 60)

He also uses the techniques of ascent and descent to create ma 間 in the various points of transition - reveals and narratives that feel like a revelation (ascent) or that humble the spirit (descent).

#3. Ephemerality + transcience (Utsuroi 移ろい + Munen Muso 無念夢想)

A beam of light isolated within architectural space lingers on the surfaces of objects and evokes shadow from the background. As light varies in intensity with the shifting of time and changes of season, the appearance of objects are altered. (P. 458)

In the use of natural elements like light, water, wind, and landscapes, Tadao Ando builds the message that everything is temporary and transient. The natural light piercing the opening of a wall will change in colour and intensity throughout the day and seasons. The reflections it casts will also shift and change. He uses the neutrality of the concrete and an eye for framing that highlights the ephemerality of everything and the need for us to let go and be at peace with this.

#4. Borrowed Scenery (Shakkei 借景)

When designing religious architecture, I always aim to create a space which can continue to inspire people for many years. As a method of doing this, I often employ water, light, and wind to create an architecture which evolves and changes with its environment. When natural elements are abstracted from the raw power of the earth, it can approach a sacred plane. In traditional Japanese architecture, shakkei (borrowed landscape) is often used as a way of framing nature and creating a permeable boundary between interior and exterior. (Ando, 2018, p. 55)

Another way that the natural elements are used in Ando’s work is to incorporate borrowed landscape or shakkei - using earth, wind, water, and light from beyond the envelope to incorporate them into the overall experience. In the Church on the Water in Tomamu, the cross is off-center and “floating” out in the water beyond the building envelope, framed as the focal point for visitors.

(T)he cross brings together nature and the sacred, earth and sky, exteriority and interiority, mystery and matter, body and spirit. The cross defines the emptiness as sacred, so that it makes the ineffable palpable. (Daelemans, 2014, p. 24)

Related Projects

In order to further back up my analysis that, rather than a commentary on Christian symbolism or a desire to deconstruct, Tadao Ando was and is more focused on using ma in his designs to guide the occupants to shintai. I’m focusing on three other religious structures, two of which were built before the Church of the Light and one that is Buddhist to demonstrate a similar approach.

Chapel on Mount Rokko (1986), Kobe

Probably the most extreme example of how Tadao Ando deploys the use of long journeys is at the Chapel on Mount Rokko in Kobe. According to Alex Veal in the 2002 study entitled Time in Japanese Architecture: tradition and Tadao Ando, “Ando employs to engage with the passage of time are rooted in the Japanese tradition and vividly expressed in the chapel.” (p. 351) Incorporating many of the characteristics of a traditional roji, tunnels, zigzagging garden paths, and stepping stones are all utilized to transport the visitor into a whole new world.

This project also integrates borrowed scenery (a view into a Zen garden not accessible via path), transcience (“the south wall of the chapel…acts as a canvas for the shadow of a nearby tree, the quality of light and form of the image changing perceptibly even during a brief visit” (ibid., p. 356), and walls that do not exist (the use of slots between the walls and ceiling).

Church on the Water (1988), Tomamu

As mentioned earlier, the Church on the Water at Tomamu is an incredibly striking example of the use of shakkei (borrowed scenery) as a way to connect interior space to the exterior/natural world in a meaningful way. This isn’t just about creating a beautiful view. The entire framing is intentionally narrowed:

Ando…did not open Tomamu “widely” towards its surroundings but consciously “frames” nature and consciously “stages” a cross in-between exterior and interior spaces. Placing the cross as visible witness of the infinite appearing within the finite, Ando allows their invisible relationship to come to the fore. (Daelemans, 2014, p. 24)

Walls that, literally, don’t exist (the wall facing the man-made pond has a sliding glass panel to open up), passages to a separate world (“From this point, the visitor descends a darkened stairway to emerge in the rest of the chapel.” (Dal Co, 1995, p. 282), and transcience/ephemerality (the changing of the seasons, light, time of day, and wind are all very visible) are all incorporated into this design as well.

Honpukuji Temple/Water Temple (1991), Awaji Island

The approach to the Honpukuji Temple is an excellent example of Passages to a Separate World:

The temple hall is below ground, beneath a large oval pond filled with lotus plans. It is reached by means of a descending stair which divides the pond, and appears to draw visitors under water. The hall is composed of a square space, gridded with timber pillars, contained within a round room. The interior of the hall and its pillars are stained vermillion: this traditional Buddhist colour intensifies when the reddish glow of sunset floods the space, casting long shadows from the pillars deep into the interior. (Ibid., p. 384)

This project also makes use of the transience of nature in the reflection of the water, the borrowed scenery of the sunset as a way to manipulate the colour and shadow of the interior, and the walls simply provide a frame for the journey as well as keeping the visitor dry as they descend into the temple.

Conclusion

Neither Tadao Ando’s work nor his words, with stories and philosophies repeated time and again during this career, give any indication that the Japanese notions of emptiness (mu, in particular, but also ma) mean the same thing as “the spatial emptiness of Christian architecture,” (Baek, 2010, p. 3). In fact, his work, in general, demonstrated the influence that Japanese culture, especially the philosophies of Buddhism/Shintoism and the experiences created in Sukiya-zukuri architecture with a particular focus on teahouses, roji, and Japanese farmhouses.

Even when he works overseas, he endeavours to “incorporate the Japanese senses or the Japanese spirit.” (Ando, 2002)

Emptiness in the Japanese context does not mean the same thing as in the Western world. Emptiness is so complex in Japan that it has several words for its various states. The emptiness notion of mu (無) is a statement on the impermanence of everything and the aim of non-attachment. Then there is en (縁), which is a form of emptiness in that it is a bridge or transition between one state and another. Finally, there is ma (間), the most hopeful, beautiful emptiness (or nothingness) there is.

But overall, the emptiness that Ando imbues in his projects is captured in this passage:

I do not believe architecture should speak too much. It should remain silent and let nature in the guise of sunlight and wind speak. Sunlight changes in quality with the passage of time. It may gently pervade space at one moment, and stab through it like a blade at the next. At times it is almost as if one could reach out and touch the light. Wind and rain are equally transformed by seasonal change. They can be chilling or gentle and pleasant. They activate space, make us aware of the season, and nurture within us a finer sensitivity. (Ando, 1995, p. 449)

There is no emptiness in the cross in the Church of the Light. It is speaking constantly though everyone hears a different voice.

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Tadao Ando's Church of Light and the Fullness of Emptiness /July 7, 2023 by Tara Hunt