Tadao Ando envelops a giant Buddha statue with a temple covered with lavender

Tadao Ando - Pritzker Prize 1995 - has designed a monumental lavender-covered temple that surrounds a giant Buddha statue in the Makomanai Takino Cemetery in the Japanese city of Sapporo, more than 1,100 kilometers north of Tokyo.

Before the construction of the temple, the 13.5-meter-high Buddha sculpture was alone for 15 years. After its completion, the client realized that the stone statue was desescalada with respect to its surroundings, generating in the visitors an uncomfortable sensation. For this reason, they decided to hire Ando to create a more serene transition upon arrival to the statue.

The temple envelops the statue, leaving only the tip of its head visible from outside the hill, surrounded by more than 150,000 lavenders that allow to vary the color of the landscape from green in spring to purple in summer, to white with snow in the winter. Visitors now reach the Buddha through a 40-meter-long passageway that opens into a circular space that surrounds the statue.

"The aim of this project was to build a prayer hall that could enhance the appeal of a stone carved Buddha statue 15 years ago," Ando said in an essay for DOMUS magazine.

"Our idea was to cover the Buddha up to his head with a hill with lavender. Under the hill there is a tunnel 40 meters long and a roundabout that embraces the statue," he continues.

"The intention of the design was to create an intense spatial sequence, beginning with a long approach through the tunnel to increase the anticipation of the statue, which is invisible from the outside.When it is taken to the lobby, visitors look upwards at the Buddha, Whose head is surrounded by a halo of sky at the end of the tunnel, "he adds.