A huge Buddha head peeks out from the top of a lavender-covered hill in Sapporo’s Makomanai Takino Cemetery – yet another one of the amazing works by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
150,000 plants cover the folded concrete mound that embraces the 13,5 meter-tall Buddha sculpture which, prior to Ando’s intervention, stood alone in the middle of a field in a scale that was off-putting and awkward to visitors.
Completed in 2015, a 40 meter-long passageway leads to the circular space at the foot of the Buddha, building up the visitors’ anticipation of seeing the statue in its entirety. “The project might be considered on the scale of landscape rather than architecture. It required a special frame of mind to rearrange the environment, and was a challenging and precious experience for us,” Ando states in an interview with DOMUS Magazine.
Watch the video below.
Images © Tadao Ando Architect & Associates