A Tadao Ando chapel may soon find a home in Bellevue
The building designed by the acclaimed Japanese architect would be donated by an Eastside arts patron, Barney Ebsworth. A site has been found, but it will take an economic recovery to fund it. Seattle tried but failed to land the prize.
Some years ago, the noted art collector Barney Ebsworth announced that he would like to donate land and a chapel, designed by the leading Japanese architect, Tadao Ando, to the Eastside or to Seattle. There ensued the predictable neighborhood battles, and the chapel pinged from the Eastside (Bridle Trails didn't want the traffic) to Seattle (north Capitol Hill had a cow), and then ponged back to Bellevue.
The good news is that the chapel, which will also serve as a music venue and meeting place, has found a site, just five minutes east of downtown Bellevue in a cul de sac along the Lake Hills Connector, where the city has a greenbelt and where Ebsworth has purchased an adjoining seven acres for his project. Ebsworth gives the city, particularly its Parks Department, high marks for finding the site and being "remarkably creative" in seeing that Bellevue has parks and green space for years to come.
Alas, there's a hitch, and this time it's not NIMBYism. The company Ebsworth was going to sell, in order to fund the project (in the $20 million range), has lost value dramatically in the last year, so Ebsworth says the project is now "on hold" while he waits for a better time to sell his investment. "By this time next year," he says, "we may be back in business for the project."
The story of this chapel-yet-to-happen is a fascinating one. Pope John Paul II in 1995 decided to commemorate the year 2000 by inviting some of the leading architects of the world to compete for a modernist work called the Jubilee Chapel. Ando was one of those invited, along with Santiago Calatrava, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Gunter Behnisch, and (the winner) Richard Meier. It's the plans for that unbuilt Ando chapel, somewhat scaled back in size, that Ebsworth wants to bring to the Seattle area. Ebsworth, a wealthy businessman formerly of St. Louis, had met and come to admire Ando greatly for his work in designing the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts building in St. Louis.
The proposed chapel would be set in trees, a serene building such as Ando, a master of light and simple forms, excells in building. (The Seattle firm of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen would be the local associate.) Ebsworth, who is a major collector and benefactor to the Seattle Art Museum, wants the chapel to be open for many public uses, and be largely secular except for one sung high-Episcopal service a week, and the grounds would eventually serve as a burial site for him. A leading acoustical firm, Kirkegaard Associates of Chicago, has been hired, which bodes well for the use of the chapel for small concerts.
Seattle made a run at getting the prize. The first site Ebsworth purchased, an awkward one on north Capitol Hill winding down the hillside toward Boyer, was quickly nixed by the neighbors. I and others got involved scouting for other sites, with Mayor Greg Nickels personally suggesting a few places and Department of Planning and Development director Diane Sugimura also scouting for a possible site. Most good wooded sites, such as the eastern edge of Discovery Park, had long lists of prior claimants; others had environmental or parking issues. While the chapel is not associated with any church, it is still a bit tricky to have a religious building on public grounds.
With not much happening, Ebsworth turned to Bellevue, which quickly found what seems to be an ideal site, fully wooded. If it eventually gets built, the chapel will become a huge asset for the Eastside and probably draw architectural pilgrims from around the world. Ando is Japan's leading architect, particularly known for the way he can set buildings into a landscape and for the "secular spirituality" of his religious buildings, notably the Church of Light near Osaka, his birthplace.
One hopes the chapel has been saved. It may have a few architectural issues, since it's a building designed for a different site and something may be lost in proportions as it is scaled back. But Ando is one of the greatest architects in the world, winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize, and an extraordinary master of light in religious spaces. His most recent American work, opening this weekend, is an addition to the Clark Art Institute in the Berkshires, his first museum project in a rural setting. It has his famous signatures: simple materials (concrete and cedar) an uncluttered minimalism, and virtuoso use of natural light.
Someday, we may have an Ando masterwork to join the growing collection of architectural works by major architects. It's encouraging to see both Bellevue and Tacoma are now competing with Seattle in nabbing such buildings, even if it is a little chastening to think that Seattle could not overcome its usual obstacles and let this one get away.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Jun 23, 9:44 p.m. inappropriate
I've visited Seattle University's St. Ignatius Chapel several times, hoping for divine enlightenment on why this building by Steven Holl is so praised. Is it a miracle of design -- I gather it's something about the light -- or simply a structure you're required to admire because it's from the portfolio of a certifiably Hot Architect? I'm still wondering.
Same with the downtown Seattle library. There's no ignoring this in-your-face Rem Koolhaas building. Much to like, but also much that's problematic. Nothing wrong with design that encourages dialog but is this the main reason why big name architects get the big bucks? The compulsion to create buildings whose rationale is incomprehensible to the man on the street? The goofier the design, the bigger the designer's fee?
Enter Frank Gehry's Experience Music Project. Exit immediately, stage right.
Tadao Ando removes the confusion. He's the anti-Gehry. The architect for the rest of us. Ando's buildings are intellectually accessible. Immediately brilliant. That he's self taught, without a formal architecture degree, is part of his common touch. Sure there are layers to peel and enough complexity to support essays in professional journals incomprehensible to the non-architecture world. He's won the Pritzker Prize. There's no higher praise from one's peers.
But Ando's work is evidence that greatness in contemporary architecture needn't equal chaos. His buildings are a sensory pleasure. They're serene. Concrete is Ando's signature material, one still associated with brutalist design. Nothing brutal here. Ando turns concrete into porcelain, with surfaces as smooth as a baby's bottom. The concrete masses are often suspended over water, adding to the calm.
Case in point: The Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, completed in 2002. Here, massive window walls are sheltered from the Texas sun by overhanging horizontal slabs supported by Y-beams evoking the wings of cranes, a constant in Japanese art. All surrounded by large rectangular ponds that reflect the building and bounce outside light to the building's interior.
(Ando's museum has the added fortune of sitting directly across the street from Louis Kahn's wondrous Kimbell Art Museum. Overlooking both buildings from the top of a nearby hill is the Amon Carter Museum, designed by Philip Johnson. These three showstoppers, all in a row, make Fort Worth a must visit for anyone who cares about great building design.)
David Brewster says an Ando chapel in Bellevue will "probably draw architectural pilgrims from around the world." No "probably" about it. Build it, Mr. Ebsworth, and they will come.
Eugene Carlson
Vashon