Church on the Water

This church, built as a retreat in nature in a valley of the Yubari mountains, where snow covers the ground from December to April, is a complete and flawless design that engages both architecture and landscape. Here the aim was to make a place that would invite the inhabitants of dense urban environments to a spiritual communion with the natural world and to transcend everyday life. In the tradition of Japanese gardens, the chapel and its constructed landscape act to compress and reveal the scale of the mountains, the distance to the horizon and the continuity of human history.