Tadao Ando has shared photos of his studio's new Space of Light meditative pavilion at the Museum SAN in Wonju, South Korea.

The second of two pavilions designed for the ten-year-old rural arts institution opened earlier this month. It is the third structure on the Ando-designed campus in Gangwon Province and coincides with the museum's exhibition of his youthful early designs — a tourist draw that's recently been extended for another three months owing to the self-taught Pritzker winner's tremendous popularity. 

The object of this design, Ando says, is to emulsify nature into the user’s experience, incorporating light into the otherwise murky auspices of the concrete-walled pavilion’s interior space uninterrupted in a way that recalls the philosophies embodied in his breakout 1989 Church of Light in Osaka, which features a nearly identical narrow cross opening in its façade.

Offering a demarcation from its domed 2019 predecessor, which emerges from the grounds near the north Stone Garden, Space of Light dominates the southernmost plot overlooking the museum’s sculpture garden. Visitors will experience the main enclosure, whose sole light source is the cross aperture cut into the roof, after entering through an angular high-walled walkway and small triangular courtyard. 

The museum says the new pavilion offers a contrast between the “gentle” nature of the first meditative pavilion to create more balance programmatically on campus.

“I believe that a museum is the light of hope [...] A place where people can obtain the ‘nutrients for the soul’ necessary for living a rich and fulfilling life,” Ando told The Art Newspaper earlier this summer. 

The exhibition, Tadao Ando: Youth, is now open through the end of October.