Meiso no Mori Municipal Funeral Hall
Toyo Ito & Associates · Kakamigahara, Japan · 2006
A thin white concrete roof rises and falls like a continuous sheet over glass-walled ceremonial spaces beside a reflecting pond. Developed with structural engineer Mutsuro Sasaki, the building dissolves the conventional heaviness of a crematorium and replaces it with an unusually calm, landscape-like interior.