ABSTRACT
This work illuminates the conception of Christian sacred space in Tadao Ando’s architecture,
taking as the major object of interpretation the Church of the Light in Ibaraki, Japan
(1989) (Figures I.1 and I.2). In interpreting Ando’s church of spatial emptiness, of particular
interest is the Japanese religious and philosophical tradition of nothingness (mu), which
was revived during the twentieth century by Kitarō Nishida (1870-1945) (Figure I.3),
the Father of the Kyoto Philosophical School. This revival is characterized by renewed
profundity and significance in an effort to confront negative facets of modernity-the
visible substance-oriented world perspective and self-enclosed subjectivism. In a sense,
this work is proposing a methodological re-orientation for the understanding of Ando’s
Christian architecture with a view duly attentive to nothingness, a Japanese intellectual
legacy equipped with distinctive implications on perception and body. Situating Ando’s
church within the indigenous tradition is not simply reactionary; it is an acknowledgment
of a hermeneutical principle in which tradition is seen as the ontological ground of being,
based upon which a meaningful dialogic engagement with the other is possible.
