The architect first planted additional trees and created the building around them. While the adjacent Community Hall building has a more horizontal configuration, with its circular plan and radial wooden beams supported by steel columns, thechapelis designed to facilitate spiritual reflection by focusing on the vertical. The steep angular roof clad in approximately 9,000 cast aluminum panels seems to emerges from the ground-an extension of the forest-and grows out of seven bays located around the plan perimeter.
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Each bay is wrapped with a curvedwall and tilted inward, leaving room for adjacent trees to grow freely. The structure consists of 251 pairs of slopingwooded rafters joined in an upside-down V by a hidden steel plate. Concealed ridge beams are attached to the building’s concrete foundations with a steel ring and form a continuous surface that curves and forms the interior that reaches up to 30 feet in height. The walls and roof become narrower the higher up they go, subconsciously leading the eye upwards toward the sky.
+ Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP
Via World Architecture News and arch record
Photos byKoji Fujii / Nacasa and Partners Inc
