Publication: Room to Breathe - Kohtei Zen meditation pavilion featured in Monocle Magazine

May 2025 | We are honored to see the Kohtei Zen meditation pavilion featured in Monocle Magazine’s special "Room to Breathe" expo. This curated selection journeys across the globe to highlight buildings that offer an escape from the fast pace of modern life—spaces that allow our thoughts to drift and give us space to breathe.

Completed in 2016 within the grounds of the Shinshoji Zen Museum and Gardens in Fukuyama, Japan, Kohtei was a collaborative milestone for Yuichi. I had the privilege of directing the architecture as part of the Sandwich art collective, partnering with contemporary artist Kohei Nawa and architect Yoshitaka Lee.

The pavilion is designed to resemble a ship floating above a sea of stones. To achieve its delicate, hull-like lightness, we utilized kokera-buki, a traditional roofing technique, layering 590,000 pieces of Sawara cypress.

Inside, the experience is one of profound transition. Visitors enter total darkness to encounter an "ocean of consciousness"—an installation of flickering light and rippling water that lasts 25 minutes, the exact burn time of a Zen meditation candle. It remains a project that bridges the hard and the soft, the internal and the external, creating a harmony between architecture and art.

ROOM TO BREATHE EXPO

editor: Julia Lasica, photographers: Alexis Armanet, Federico Cairoli, Jake Dockins, Kentaro Ito, Juho Kuva

 For millennia people have sought out places to visit where they can get away from the bustle of everyday life. Architecture has the ability to create moments of calm – think of how you feel when you stop at the threshold of an awe-inspiring hall, pause for a moment of contemplation in a city cathedral or clamber into a sauna in the middle of a Scandinavian winter. The fast pace of modern life means that there’s a greater need for such places than ever. That’s why Monocle has journeyed across the globe to bring you this selection of outstanding buildings that offer somewhere for our thoughts to drift – and give us space to breathe.

a place of meditation, Kohtei art pavilion, Fukuyama, Japan

Nothing quite prepares the first-time viewer for the sight of Kohtei. Set in lush green hills to the west of the Japanese city of Fukuyama, the Buddhist meditation pavilion has a mysterious air, appearing to hover above a sea of stones. That was exactly the intention of Kohei Nawa, the contemporary artist who created the design. “Kohtei was designed to resemble a ship floating in the mountains,” says Nawa, who worked on the pavilion with architects Yoshitaka Lee and Yuichi Kodai as part of an art collective, Sandwich. 

The maritime echoes were no accident. The 1960s Zen temple of Shinshoji, in whose grounds Kohtei was completed in 2016, was founded by the president of Tsuneishi, a shipbuilding company based nearby. But the subject also offered a gracefulness to the project. Drafting in craftsmen from the area, Nawa and the two architects had 590,000 pieces of Sawara cypress layered on top of each other using a traditional roofing technique called kokera-buki. In spite of the building’s size, stretching to some 45 metres in length, the delicate wooden shingles give the hull-like structure a sense of lightness.

Then there is the sensation of entering the pavilion: plunging into total darkness is an immediate shock to the visitor’s system. “The idea was to create a meditative experience by interpreting Zen through contemporary art,” says Nawa. “The interior expresses an ‘ocean of consciousness’ through installations of water and light. In the darkness, faint light and rippling waves flicker, allowing visitors to engage in a quiet sensory experience that sharpens their senses.” The duration of the installation is set to 25 minutes, the same length of time it takes for a meditation candle used in Zen practice to burn out. Visitors emerge discombobulated by what is an unexpectedly profound experience. Without trying, they have touched on the simplicity and impermanence that is at the heart of Zen. “This work emerges as a space where the external and the internal; the hard and the soft; and architecture and art resonate with each other in harmony,” says Nawa.

While the surrounding Shinshoji temple and gardens open a door to Zen, Kohtei is perhaps the most effective route into the Buddhist meditation practice. And there is much it can offer in the modern world, not least a way to switch off from our busy, overstimulated lives.

Issue 183 | Design Award Issue

→ View the Project: Kohtei Art Pavilion