If Walls Could Talk
Emma Barber
Love turns from fascination to something almost spiritual
– Roy Orbison
Many believe that you only fall in love once. Once you do, you look for it in everything. Not only that, you relish it, you preserve it, and, sometimes, it alters you so much that you deny its existence at all.
Where does one put this love when it starts seeping out of the borders of physical existence and delving into the subconscious realm? Architects put it in buildings. Some architects romanticise that weary conglomerate: form and function. Others, like Tadao Ando, romanticise materials. Some, like Frank Lloyd Wright, idealise its culture. This ideation is perpetually romantic. The ornament, the beauty, the detail. They are engrained into the walls with the delicate paintbrush of the starry-eyed subconscious. However, if walls could talk, what would they say? What would the walls of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple of 1905 say to its architect’s denial of his love affair with Japan, which was so strong he couldn’t bear to acknowledge it? How would the partitions of Tadao Ando’s 1989 Church of Light speak to its architect, who, unlike Wright, freely allowed his sheer admiration for Japanese culture to seep into his sacred Christian space?
Yearning is the intense longing for something. Frank Lloyd Wright yearned for Japan and had done so for over a decade. Like many people, he found a love for collecting things, specifically Japanese woodblock prints—ukiyo-e—that left him longing to experience the ambient culture depicted in the romantically detailed images. In pursuit of the print, he was greeted by the soft spring soil of Japan in 1905. He sunk his feet into the earth and allowed the cool breeze to tickle his face as he watched the falling cherry blossom leaves dance in the wind. As they descended to the ground, the leaves delicately brushed an exterior wall of a traditional Japanese building, a touch so gentle that Frank was immediately bewildered by the intimacy between the house and garden. He noted something so richly organic he had not realised before in Western architecture.
As he approached the end of his pilgrimage a month later, Frank travelled a hundred miles north of Tokyo to the traditional mausoleum, Taiyu-in-byo. Upon welcome, the sun gleamed on the gold, red, and green ornamented gates, which created a softness to contrast the intricate and powerful statues. Tranquil water gardens created a cool, misty breeze that added to the serene organicity of the surrounding dense landscape. For Frank, however, it was the gongen-style plan forms distinctive to the Japanese Buddhist religion that would be the most mind-altering. As Frank returned to the United States, a struggle for acceptance dawned on him. During a time of societal modernisation amalgamated with his Christian beliefs, it was Japan’s traditional Buddhist features that he found the most awe-inspiring.
For Frank Lloyd Wright, his love for Japan quickly manifested into the spiritual. In beautiful Oak Park, Illinois, he began designing the Unity Temple shortly after arriving home. Three years later, in 1908, it was completed. Frank’s Unity Temple was outstanding, radical, and modern. Admired, but seemingly unbeknown to Frank, it was also contradictory in its form. A Christian Utilitarian church, scattered with elements of traditional Japanese Buddhism.
It was sketched onto the plans, built into walls, and decorated onto the ceiling. Japanese Buddhism was everywhere. Frank ensured everything about the temple opposed traditional Western architecture. The relationship between the temple and natural light was angelic. The sun gleamed through the building from skylights above, creating a natural glow that elevated the spiritual ambience. The soft light bounced off the temple walls, gently guiding into the Noble Room for worship. Such a softness was so powerful, as it implied the heavy concrete roof and overhangs to be featherweight, to give the illusion that it was lightly floating above the walls. The windows, ornamented with vertical and horizontal patterns, were a feast for the eyes, providing a sequence of geometric beauty.
The walls spoke more of its Buddhist influence than ever did. His love of the Taiyu-in-byo crypt relished in his subconscious, secretly infiltrating into each element of his designs, even unaware to the man himself. He often made attempts to relieve his subconscious denial, by repressing his influence of the Buddhist gongen partis that awed him at the Taiyu-in-byo. But, as humans, when the things we love consume our subconscious too much, they explode and spill into everything we do. As much as Frank denied it, Buddhist elements oozed nicely into his design.
In the gongen-style, the honden is a sanctuary reserved for spiritual deities. A haiden is an oratory for worshippers. These structures are connected by a narrow, immediate corridor between the two spaces. In the Unity Temple, there are two distinct buildings, one for public matters and one for religious affairs, that are woven together by an entrance hall and the delicate hand of Frank’s sketches, to create a harmonious building. In the Taiyu-in-byo, the floor level changes between the ainoma, room connecting the two main rooms of a building, and the main sanctuary. In the Unity Temple, the floor level changes between the entrance lobby and the main hall. The Temple walls are sunken into cloister corridors to create a more tranquil, intimate experience while walking through the building. The cube-shaped room mirrors the same geometry as in the Taiyu-in-byo. Frank could not escape it. The Unity Temple is a modern embodiment of the traditional Japanese Buddhist architecture he so deeply admired.
The Temple walls speak volumes. They courteously scream at Frank, begging to be acknowledged for their Buddhist beauty. Frank instead, preaches the superiority of Christianity to absorb whatever was good in preceding forms of religion. The walls retreat defeated, their ornament overlooked, as Frank failed to acknowledge that Christianity might have the power to absorb preceding religions. But Japanese Buddhism had the power to absorb him completely. Frank ponders and denies his subconscious fascination with this Japanese style. Other architects were fascinated with Europe. Nobody will understand his deep love for Japan. He fears the West will not understand, and question why he would make an American Christian Church inter-religious and intertwine it with Buddhism. So, Frank left the cries of the walls unheard and buried his love for Japan deep in its concrete structure. There, this love could not be uncovered.
Over the next several years, his sensitivities towards his connection to Japan rose into an indisputably arrogant denial. Frank was seated when he opened a copy of an essay written about his building, Unity Temple, by his friend and British architect, Charles Robert Ashbee. As he read, he started to boil with anger, becoming furious and short-tempered. Charles had claimed that Japan had influenced Frank in his architecture, which left Frank so enraged that he censored Charles’ comments before publishing. Indeed, it seemed that love was blind.
Eighty years later, in the cherry blossom-bedecked city of Osaka, Japan, architect, Tadao Ando, plans on designing a Christian church with Buddhist influence. It is 1989. Tadao’s Church of Light has just been rectified. The church is no bigger than a small house, unsurprising, since Christians only make up one per cent of the Japanese population. Although the size accounts for this one per cent, the tranquil atmosphere in the building makes up the other ninety-nine per cent.
Tadao was born in Japan, the place for which Frank yearned. All these years on, the beauty of Japan lingered, leaving behind the scent of blossoming gliding in the wind that mesmerised Frank. Tadao also cherished Japan’s traditionalism, but, unlike Frank, was aware of the impact the Buddhist traditions had on his subconscious. Tadao admired the roji, the traditional garden path to a Japanese tearoom that in Buddhism, signified the mind was free. He adored the lush greenery, stone pathways, and organic landscaping as the key to creating an other-worldly space that brings the outside in. He continued to analyse traditional Japanese buildings themselves, noting their subtly imperfect symmetry that creates a notion of mysteriousness, and in his searches, discovered the key to redefining his love for traditional Japanese architecture in modern, light concrete. Frank fell in love with traditional Japan. Tadao fell in love with how concrete captures traditional Japan. Both let this material rule their subconscious.
So, it was only fitting that when Tadao designed the Church of Light, it was entirely concrete. The concrete was raw and exposed, mirroring the materiality of traditional structures. It was rich and enhanced the emotional experience of embracing the nothingness. Emptiness is its key element. Tadao wanted to make a point: that his understanding of Christianity, a religion other than his own, could be embraced so acutely that he did not need ornamentation to flaunt it. He engrained it into the walls themselves.
Tadao stood at the base of the church entrance, which acted like the portal between two realms: the lush, dense landscape, and the empty, dark interior. Upon entering the church, he admired his creation. The initial dark entrance dissolved into rays of light that cracked through the concrete walls and intimately hugged the small, rectangular space. Tadao descended the steps towards the altar, embracing the cavernous spatiality. The journey is humbling, leading him to the lowest point of the church, where he stood modestly in front of the majestic cruciform cross. The pockets of light land on his skin create an aura of weightlessness. He feels transcendence to a higher self.
Love makes labour light
– Teresa of Avila
Surrounding him, the concrete, a labour of his love, poured gently and precisely. Tadao’s love of this substance was more than a physical manifestation in his designs. He treated concrete with delicacy, such a heavy and raw material, he sculpted with the art of luminous light to be depicted as graceful, and light as a feather. The first morning rays splinter through the transversal slits in the wall that form the cruciform cross, allowing a slither of nature inside, contributing to its sacred space.
The walls spoke for themselves. They were so empty, ridden of Christian iconography and ornamentation. But to Tadao, this was what allowed God to be present in the space. It didn’t distract, it didn’t stray from the path of its purpose. Concrete was Tadao’s partner in crime. Some described it as dull, but to Tadao, it was the sole material that could flip through the pages of traditional Japanese history and preserve its culture, to add new chapters for the world to see. It was so raw and exposed, embodying the traditional housing he admired so genuinely, but its emphasis on the nothingness allowed Tadao to tell his story of not only admiring the Christian faith, but his own Buddhist faith, too. The church preserved Buddhism in its walls, like Frank’s Unity Temple. However, this time, Tadao tucked it away in a warm blanket, not in a cage.
Tadao’s ode to Japanese Buddhism was modest, and respectful of its place in a Christian church, allowing him to create a divine inter-religious fusion. He pondered on how to endeavour, how to take the Christian cross, criticised by his own religion as being a symbol of cruelty, and how to satisfy the Buddhist principles of peace in death. The empty cross was all-encompassing, as the light beamed through in its absence, satisfying the peaceful Buddhist traditions engrained in his subconscious of emphasising Jesus’ resurrection, not his suffering. To Tadao, it was more than just the cross, the peace of Buddhism was voiced through the walls. The concrete spoke to the shintai, the Buddhist principle of embracing the world as the content of the self. The concrete was cold and hard, but it spoke softly to the warmth of the body, embracing the harmony between the building and the self, which to Tadao recognised the shintai. Tadao’s love for Japan was clear.
This is the story of two architects, Frank Lloyd Wright and Tadao Ando. They loved Japan. The country held them captive, controlled their subconscious, and spat out its culture into their buildings. Frank took a piece of Japan home with him and tried to bury it deep in the walls of the Unity Temple. He feared someone would discover the influence that Japan’s Buddhist traditions had on him, how it consumed his subconscious, and how it seeped into the ornamentation of the walls. He couldn’t bear to comprehend how he, a Christian man, could be so moved by an ancient religion other than his own. Even more so, he feared what everyone would think of him.
Unlike Frank, Tadao immersed himself in his love for Japan. He simply acknowledged the impact of growing up in Buddhist Japan, and beautifully fused it into the walls of the Christian Church of Light so delicately and confidently that it did not overpower the Christian faith. Instead, the architecture left room for both to flourish in one space. Even as a Buddhist man, he acknowledged the beauty of the Christian faith so openly and detailed it in his work, so the walls could flaunt their pride.
The Unity Temple walls were silenced by Frank, unable to speak on their influence by the beautiful Buddhist culture in the Christian church. The Church of Light walls of Tadao spoke for themselves in a voice so strong that it did not need ornamentation to speak of its influence. The beautiful fusion of cultures was engrained in the walls themselves. When you let the walls of these buildings talk, they have much to say.