Built in 1989 in a quiet neighborhood of Ibaraki, near Osaka, this small chapel is one of the most famous works of Tadao Ando. At about 1,200 square feet, it is roughly the size of a small house.
The church is a simple box of smooth, precisely poured concrete, crossed by a wall set at a 15-degree angle that divides the entrance from the chapel. Visitors slip in between the two. Inside, the only ornament is light. Behind the altar, a cross is cut straight through the concrete wall from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, and daylight streams through it into the dark room. The benches and floorboards were made from scaffolding used in the construction.
The chapel belongs to a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Japan, and a Sunday school by Ando was added in 1999.
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