curved latticed roof crowns joint burial ground at the myohoji temple in hiroshima

hiroshima’s Myohoji Temple welcomes a joint grave

Japanese practice ArchTank has built a mini roofscape for a joint grave at the Myohoji Temple of the Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji sect — a place of worship that has occupied Hiroshima‘s Kure City for 400 years. The grave is sited the nearby Karesansui gardens and can be visited daily. ‘[It] is not for the deceased, but for those left behind,’ notes the Temple’s chief priest. Building on his words, ArchTank adopts Japan’s traditional wood joining technique to create a shrine-like wooden structure with a curving roof. This small place of remembrance echoes a Buddhist saying, ‘Heizei Goujo’, encouraging those who were left behind to lead a normal life again.

archtank’s wooden roofscape as an interlocking joint system

The team at ArchTank has designed the roof as a latticed wooden structure made up of a three-dimensional interlocking joint system that can resist disturbances without adding diagonal members, thus leaving room for various gaps and shadows to unfold. The curved roof, reminiscent of historical shipbuilding in the city of Kure, recalls the roofscape of the Myohoji Temple. Moreover, as time passes and as visitors walk around the garden, the joint grave’s dynamic surface seems to take on new appearances and expressions. ‘A roof that shines in the morning sun and is dyed in the evening,’ notes the studio.

‘Every phenomenon in this garden accepts various thoughts that people remember there. This roof is not a place to bury ashes, but a symbol that can be visited on a daily basis to remember the deceased, and this garden is a place for visitors to get a new connection to the Buddha. [We] hope that the small universe of Karesansui will become a new form of grave,’ continue Nagi Kumagai and Yasumasa Hayashi from ArchTank. 

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project info:

name: Myohoji Temple joint grave

location: Hiroshima, Kure

architecture: ArchTank
design team: Nagi Kumagai, Yasumasa Hayashi
client: Myohoji Temple
construction: Yoshimura Construction
structure: Shimpei Kojima
photographer: Tsutomu Yoshizaki
drone shot: Shintaro Nishimoto