Japan

Hill of the Buddha

Japan

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At Makomanai Takino Cemetery in Sapporo, Japan, Tadao Ando designed the Hill of the Buddha, a modernist Buddhist shrine that opened in December 2015. The structure centers on a 13.5-meter-tall Buddha statue, sculpted around 2000, which Ando ingeniously integrated into an artificial hill rotunda planted with 150,000 lavender plants. Visitors approaching the shrine see only the statue's head emerging from the hillside before entering through a tunnel that reveals the full figure within the open rotunda—a spatial sequence that transforms the landscape itself into an act of worship.