Detail of the project ed. 2016

church-sun-pu / TAIRA NISHIZA­WA Archi­tects CO.LTD.

Design­er  Taira Nishizawa
Loca­tion  15–1, Aioi­cho, Aoi-ku Shizuo­­ka-shi, Shizuo­ka, 420‑0838, Japan
Design Team  

1.architects : Taira Nishiza­wa Archi­tects (Taira Nishiza­wa and Hiroyu­ki Unemori)
2.Mechanical engi­neer : Kankyo Engi­neer­ing + Sys­tem Design Laboratory
3.acoustic engi­neea : Kara­sawa Archi­tec­tu­al & Acoustic Design
4.lighting engi­neer : Masahide Kaku­date Light­ing Architect
5.ornament (entrance gate) : Maki Kaneko
6.pipe organ : Marc Ganier Orgues
Year  2008
Pho­to credits  

EXTER­NAL 1 (SUN­PU) : Hiroshi Ueda
EXTER­NAL 2 (SUN­PU) : Hiroshi Ueda
EXTER­NAL 3 (SUN­PU) : Hiroshi Ueda
EXTER­NAL 4 (SUN­PU) : SHINKENSHIKU-SHA
EXTER­NAL 5 (SUN­PU) : Hiroshi Ueda

INTER­NAL 1 (SUN­PU) : Yasuhi­ro Takagi
INTER­NAL 2 (SUN­PU) : Hiroshi Ueda
INTER­NAL 3 (SUN­PU) : Hiroshi Ueda
INTER­NAL 4 (SUN­PU) : Hiroshi Ueda
INTER­NAL 5 (SUN­PU) : SHINKENSHIKU-SHA

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Church Sun-pu

　A Protes­tant Church built in wood­en con­struc­tion in Japan. It stands on a cor­ner between com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial zone in Shizuo­ka City. The sanc­tu­ary sits close to the com­mer­cial zone and faces a rail­way, and its cor­ner entry face a town square. In con­trast the remain­ing func­tions, includ­ing a par­son­age, are near the res­i­den­tial zone. The chapel is a sim­ple cube while the rest is under a pitched roof. The for­mer looks sim­i­lar in vol­ume to neigh­bor­ing build­ings, the lat­ter does like hous­es on a small­er res­i­den­tial street.
　Through­out, pure light and the sound of voic­es were key to design; God is described first as “light” and then as ”the word”. Dur­ing wor­ship with­in, believ­ers read the Bible togeth­er aloud.
　The exte­ri­or is clad in split boards of West­­ern-cedar with a wavy tex­ture with­out being paint­ed nor planed, so as to let the exte­ri­or be respond­ing the light; Sun­light strikes this uneven sur­face and makes nar­row shad­ow, when it comes in par­al­lel with the walls, then the appear­ance is wrapped in shad­ow and light in sharpest con­trast. The north façade, fac­ing rail­way, is done so for 30minuites just before the sun­set, and the west façade, fac­ing side street, is done so at noon just after the church ser­vice. These walls also will age a black sil­ver, lines of light and shad­ow looks like an etch­ing plate, and will high­light 2 ele­ments on the cor­ner, a cross and an entry gate with Garar­i­an grape-ivy filigree.
　The inte­ri­or is wrapped in slim boards of French-pine. The gap between each board is grad­u­al­ly widen­ing fur­ther upward, so as to con­trol the light and sound con­di­tion; There is an emp­ty space behind the boards, in which the trussed struc­ture are stand­ing, is damper­ing and absorb­ing exte­ri­or noise or exces­sive inter­nal echo, so as to achieve ide­al rever­ber­a­tion for spo­ken word. The arc of light over time is also empha­sized with this thick enve­lope: at the ceil­ing, each board almost thread-like, gauzi­ly fil­ter­ing light; light spills on th

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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