Toyo Ito’s Meiso No Mori Funeral Hall

Credit: architectural-review.com

Japanese architect Toyo Ito, known for his conceptual architecture, designed the Meiso No Mori (Forest of Meditation) Crematorium in a garden cemetery in Kakamigahara, a town with a population of 150,000 in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan. Completed in 2006, Meiso No Mori is nestled between forested hills to the south and a small lake to the north.

With the old cemetery poised for demolition, Toyo Ito was able to bring to fruition his vision of a funeral hall free from the constraints of religion. The roof is an undulating plain of white concrete that looks as though it’s floating, reminiscent of smoke rising from cremation fires. Its forms echo the forms of the mountainous landscape and seamlessly blend in with its surroundings. The roof is supported by a dozen elegant tapered columns that also serve as drainage. Project architect Leo Yokota explains the concept for the roof with captivating imagery: “Rather than the heavy, dignified architecture usual with crematoria, we imagined a soft place, as if a gentle snowfall had settled lightly upon the site to form a broad and generous roof.”

Credit: theplan.it

Ito had to create a thin shell of concrete in order to achieve the floating effect. Due to the heaviness of the material, the formwork, or temporary molds that concrete is poured into, was essential in achieving this. Architect Georg Windeck says, “The formwork is the actual architecture, and the concrete is only there to document it in order to permanently preserve it’s memory, just as a death mask is made to preserve the facial features of a departed person.”  

Japan has the highest cremation rate in the world. A 2012 report by the cremation society of Great Britain recorded its cremation rate at 99.9 percent. This is due to both space limitations and the Oceanic tenets of Buddhism. Traditionally in Japan, mourners witness the coffin going into the crematorium oven. After the body has been burned, loved ones use large chopsticks to pick bones from the ashes, which they collect in an urn.

Meiso No Mori provides facilities for the ritual, with three waiting rooms, two valedictory rooms, a hall with six cremators, and two “inurnment rooms.” (Inurnment is the act of placing cremated remains in an urn followed by placement in a niche or some other resting location.) There is also an indoor-outdoor ambiance as the circulation area offers views of the lake.