Saint Mary Cathedral of Tokyo

Added : 05 Apr 2011 | Visits : 2136 | Average votes : %

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The Saint Mary Cathedral designed by Kenzo Tange is an iconic and striking architectural building in concrete which is timeless and attempts to transcend boundaries of region.

The Saint Mary Cathedral of Tokyo, designed by Kenzo Tange is one of the few building built that do not belong to any time or age. As Kenzo Tange has said, “Architecture is the creation of a special form of understanding of reality. It works and transforms reality through the construction of an important object of use. The object of this art form, on the other hand, has the dual quality of serve as a mirror and enhance it. This understanding of reality that takes place through the creation of the architecture requires that the anatomy of it, as its substantial and spiritual structure, be understood as a whole ".

Kenzo Tange won the tender for reconstruction of the Saint Mary Cathedral in 1961, after it was destroyed in the World War II. The old wooden cathedral, built in Gothic style was restored by Tange, who visualized the new church as a concrete structure clad in stainless steel cladding on the exterior. Tange designed the cathedral as a living entity to become an architecture used for all people, rising above the mundane and an architecture that should transcend the borders of Japan. The Saint Mary Cathedral was simple in concept but complex in its shape. The plan of the building is in the form of a cross, from which eight walls rise up curved hyperbolically, forming four main facades. These eight walls are the rudiments, which hold the whole cathedral and are the roof and the walls at the same time. The walls that curve hyperbolically upwards open up and turn the rhomboidal ground floor into a cross at the roof level. This forms a cross-shaped skylight that continues vertically downwards the length of the four facades. The heights of these walls are different thus forming stark, soaring roofs at various heights, and recalling a bird’s wing. The highest wing is at a height of 3,941 meters. This makes a dynamic and active shape in rigid concrete.

The stark concrete walls are covered with a stainless steel and galvanized aluminum cladding on the exterior, resembling a shining dress on the concrete slabs. The cladding in monochromatic, however it appears to be dynamic, changing color every hour due to the curves of the concrete walls.

The ground floor of the Cathedral is 2541 square meters and has a capacity to seat up to 600 people. The main entrance is through a large wooden door between two high concrete walls that frame the four large windows. The altar can be accessed by some steps and is illuminated by the light reflected from the cross shaped skylight. The Holy Cross stands behind a marble plaque of 17 meters. The second and third floors are exclusively for the operation and maintenance of the Cathedral.

Stone blocks at the basement level hold the movement of the walls to the ground and are in direct contrast to the metal clad concrete walls. The changing light due to the reflection on the curved surfaces makes the interior atmosphere extremely alive and energetic. The light enters the interior through glazed gaps in the walls and roof. Four vertical gaps between the walls from the roof to the ground and four as roof light – the cross shape, allow direct sunlight and diffused reflections into the interior space.

The bell tower with its four vertical lines flowing into one another stretches up 60 meters in the sky and is placed a few meters away from the Cathedral, as was the case with many European Cathedrals at that time. Though at the first glance, the concrete walls of the bell tower appear flat, in reality they are also hyperbolic and its four corners come together as a single straight line. It integrates seamlessly with the whole complex, and houses four bells that were brought in from West Germany.

The secondary buildings are rectangular in shape and are in sharp contrast with their straight lines. These buildings are linked to the Cathedral by roofs.

This glimmering arrangement of metallic curves makes it an iconic and striking architectural building in the dense urban Tokyo region.