Back to the beginnings
Prior Kieran, of the Benedictines, called at my office three and a half years ago, during the cherry blossom season. At the time the Benedictines, who had been living for going on 50 years in Meguro, Tokyo, in charge of St.Anselm’s Meguro Church, one of Antonin Raymond’s masterpieces, had just begun planning their leaving this familiar home to move to Fujimi, in Nagano prefecture, to a property they had previously acquired there. I was given the job of navigating the process of the building of new living quarters for the seven monks who were returning to their original starting point, a contemplative monastery, and wanted to create a community devoted to prayer and work in a natural environment.
A series of meetings, every two weeks of discussions, first of all on what kind of place the future monastery, a monastery to fit the Japanese landscape, should be, continued, with repeated arguments, all the way down to the storage space of the private rooms and details of utensils to be used in the kitchen. With the change of season we went to the building site, and there the group really demonstrated their group way of facilitating their business by community action as they combined the careful inspections of every detail of the project made by the various members. Finally from nearly a year’s accumulation of meetings, a plan for a complex, consisting of the chapel in the center surrounded by a cluster of gabled buildings joined by corridors and a long cloister walk slowly emerged. At this stage it was decided that I visit St.John’s Abbey, the US headquarters of these Benedictines. I got the consent of their Design Committee, and at the same time as a result of my conversations with the monks there I was able to get an idea from personal observation of the scale of the spaces of the buildings, and of the furnishings and entrances of the monastery.


The Message of Marcel Breuer
As the morning fog finally lifted, the bells announcing the time for morning prayer echoed across the woods on the shores of Lake Sagatagan. Through the special intervention of the Abbot, during my brief stay, I was housed in a room which was within the monastic enclosure where normally only monks were allowed, and which furthermore had a marvelous view.
As a result of my brief glimpse of the life of prayer and work hidden in this natural environment of silence, I realized that I had come upon people who were living a monastic life which still today uses as its norm of living the rule of St.Benedict written more than 1500 years ago.
St. John’s Abbey, which, with more than 200 monks, is one of a handful of large abbeys in the U.S., in the 1960’s invited Marcel Breuer to plan some major buildings for them, beginning with the church. 40 years later his favorite word, “timelessness,” still applies to this impressive layout as well as to his meticulous attention to detail, with the passage of time more impressive.
Speaking of Breuer, I had a conversation with Mr.I.M.Pei, in the last years of the 80’s, whenever I call at his New York office he always welcomes me heartily, talking about trends in architecture of that period, (he was concerned about the reports of the magazines of the productions of the “bubble” time in Japan), he talked again of the great importance of a “timeless” architecture. To the question, “In this connection, who was the greatest architect of the period?” Pei without hesitation responded with the name, Breuer. Now, ten years later, at St.John ‘s, I came to appreciate his meaning.


Responding to Timelessness
Aiming at a timeless architecture and using Breuer’s message as a basis, I set about planning the details stage of the monastery. I needed to combine in a harmonious manner changing elements with unchanging, composition of the spaces, selection of materials, and the many details involved in all these. I selected brick facing for the outer walls not only because it would enable exterior insulation but also because that material improves with the passing of the years. Looking for a red, toned down to a quiet tint, combined with a natural texture, from several possibilities I chose an import from England. As for the roof, at first, for budget reasons I chose artificial tile, but then acceded to the request to use the more weather resistant natural slate, and was able for a reasonable price to get a hold of a supply of panel-form slate sleeping in one maker’s storeroom.
One can easily grasp the unchanging character of these materials already from the entrance. The long brick wall, while on the one hand it serves the function of marking the boundary separating the monastery’s inside from the outside, at the same time was held to such a height that the roofs are visible over the walls, serving to give a warm welcome to visitors I got a hint for this wall from the brick wall at St.John’s Abbey, a symbol of times changing from former times when monasteries were severely enclosed. When one passes through the wall one comes into a light-filled corridor and is led to the chapel, to the monastery meeting room and to the other buildings. In the ceilings of the corridors of the various buildings, which cast variegated shadows, are tunnel-shape passages filled with fan coils, pipe work, electric cables. I arranged these so that the monks can easily climb up and not only take care of ordinary maintenance, but also easily change machines, or pipes, add equipment. With this tunnel I was able to muffle the sounds of noise-making machines, this has contributed to the effort to prevent noise an otherwise almost zero noise environment.
As for the switches and electrical outlet boxes, I deliberately did not sink them into the concrete, but installed them in the door frames and in the wooden panels outside the concrete walls. In that way not only could I avoid making openings in the walls, but could allow for changes in size and other changes needed. I feel that since equipment often needs to be changed, and in any case, compared with the basic wall structure has a much shorter life cycle, this needs to be considered.
These are a small portion of the things we wrestled with, they reflect the timelessness of a monastery, or in other words, efforts and a challenge which call for a building with a limitless future.
Assuming that this architecture will maintain its existence over the centuries, that is to be attributed to the dreams of the monastics who relentlessly, patiently continued their discussions, and to the zeal of my partners, from the those who made the working plans to the supervisory staff, who permitted not the smallest compromise, and to the crystal gift of the sweat of those who put the plans into execution and the workers. I have been made aware of this basic principle that in every age, the architecture is accomplished by the heart of people.
The monastic life of the new community at Fujimi began in June. The clear rays of sun shine gently through the Japanese larch trees. While we do not look for things on the scale of the forests and lakes of Minnesota, our long-time prayers for a life of prayer and work in a rural environment have now been answered. At the beginning of this new millennium we can say that the new thousand years have only just begun for this Benedictine monastery.

JAPAN ARCHITECT 1999.12
[ YATSUGATAKE HOLY TRINITY BENEDICTINE MONASTERY ]