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Church of the Light
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 Tadao
Ando’s Church of the Light is located in Ibaraki, a residential neighbourhood
25 kilometers north-northeast of Osaka. The building can be described
simply as a bare concrete box with a wall cutting through it at a 15 degree
angle. The heavy cast-in-place walls help separate the religious
experience inside the small 113 square meter chapel from the outside world.
The delineation between sacred and profane is important on this site, which
does not permit much distance between two streets and the church itself.
Ando's Church of the Light was a very low-budget affair, where the starkness of the interior was a necessity, and not so much an aesthetic choice. The contractor donated the construction of the roof when funds ran out and the church pews are made of wood salvaged from the concrete formwork. Yet the simplicity of the church is its beauty — a highly ordered, extremely focussed space only steps away from the workaday residential neighbourhood outside.
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The
experience starts with the worshipper making his way past the existing
minister’s house, to the back of the concrete church. The intersecting
walls create an entry forecourt, forcing the visitor to take an S-turn
to enter. Inside, the space is dominated by the glowing cross at
the end of the nave. The bare concrete walls have no decorations
that would mitigate the experience. The starkness creates an isolated,
ascetic feeling inside the church. The interior is perhaps claustrophobic,
with views to the outside only available through the 20 cm gap in the concrete
wall that is the cross. The dominance of the cross is paramount in
the church, requiring the pastor to preach from one side, which took some
convincing on Ando’s part.
