Leaf Chapel
Kobuchizawa, Japan
Klein Dytham architecture

Klein-Dytham Architecture sets a wall of a wedding chapel in motion at a resort in the Japanese Alps

© Katsuhisa Kida

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By Clifford A. Pearson

Theatrics have always played an important role in church architecture. Soaring naves, mysterious lighting, and bold murals have helped fill pews for hundreds of years. Now Klein-Dytham Architecture has taken this strategy into the 21st century, using its own form of stagecraft to add drama to a small wedding chapel in the Japanese Alps. Because the 550-square-foot chapel sits in the garden of a resort hotel and is as much a business as a sacred space, architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham could take liberties that might not be appropriate for other religious buildings. Their client, after all, was a businessman who owns hotels and a brewery, not a church leader or congregation. “He knew we are media-savvy and would design something that would attract attention in the magazines,” says Dytham.

Part of the sprawling Risonare resort (designed by Mario Bellini during the economic bubble of the 1980s), the chapel needed to have its own identity and at least the semblance of spirituality. But because people of many different faiths would get married there, it needed an ecumenical design with no iconography associated with any particular religion or sect.

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Formal name of Project:
Leaf Chapel

Location:
Kobuchizawa, Japan

Gross square footage:
1,807 sq. ft.

Client:
Risonare ( Hoshino Resort )

Architect:
Klein Dytham architecture
www.klein-dytham.com