Meiso no Mori Funeral Hall, Kakamigahara City Japan

Toyo Ito designed the Meiso no Mori (Forest of Meditation) Funeral Hall crematoria for the “park cemetery” at Kakamigahara City, in Gifu Japan. Completed in 2006, the seamless white concrete flows freely alongside a reflective lake with glass underneath. Gentle snowfall had settled lightly upon the site to form a broad and generous roof.Project architect Leo Yokota said the team didn’t seek a monument or stately ediface, but a “gentle snowfall had settled lightly upon the site to form a broad and generous roof.”

Dispensing with typical hard angles in Ito’s mercantile architecture, the ambiguity of inside versus outside is treated delicately with graceful gestures and celebration of light. The physical tabernacle is not celebrated in with this ambiguity, nor the human body, but the thin line between physical object and spiritual.

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(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(yuco
– flickr/creative commons license)

(featured image by yuco on flickr/creative commons)