theory
The idea of the infinite has haunted architects from Etienne-Louis
Boullée to Tadao Ando. The finite experience of natural elements
in Ando’s Azuma House is where infinity resides.
The sublime and the Azuma House by
Tadao Ando
Jin Baek
This paper investigates the sublime as manifested
in the architecture of Tadao Ando. The primary
object of interpretation is his Azuma House (1976)
in Osaka. However, according to Ando, the sublime
equally characterises his religious work such as the
Church of the Light (1989) near Osaka. One unique
characteristic of Ando’s architecture is the treatment
of residential and religious buildings according to
common spatial themes, challenging the
conventional dichotomy between the profane and
the sacred. The evocation of the sublime can be
claimed as one such theme. Both buildings are
particularisations of the theme of the sublime: in
the case of the Azuma House into the context of the
everyday and, in the case of the Church of the Light,
into the context of the theological horizon of
Christianity. This paper elucidates how the spatial
setting of the Azuma residence conditions, in a
distinguishing manner, the experience of the
sublime. Given that, in the history of Western
architecture, Etienne-Louis Boullée’s architecture of
immense emptiness (as manifested in the
Metropolitan Basilica and Newton’s Cenotaph)
presents itself as one of the most distinctive
articulations of the sublime, it is employed here as
the dialogic partner for Ando’s architecture of the
sublime.
Spatial emptiness and the perceptual dialectic between
contradictions
While describing the origin of his architecture in the
Japanese tea room, Ando wrote: ‘a person sitting
silent and contemplative in such a space has the
feeling of experiencing limitless size within the
interplay of light and dark’ (Ando, 1990). This is a
puzzling statement. Any tea room is unostentatious
in its scale. Limitlessness and boundlessness are
anything but characteristic of this type of space.
However, Ando went further in conjoining the
fleeting moment of ‘the interplay of light and dark’
with eternity. As he stated:
‘The Japanese, moreover, have been inclined since ancient
times to discover eternal character in that which fades and
dies, feeling the eternal to be intuitable, contradictorily, in
what has only fleeting existence. A flower is an ideal
metaphor for this: for it withers, scattering its petals,
just when we find it to have attained its optimum beauty.
Though we pray for that beauty to endure, nothing in this
world is immortal, and there is, finally, no more apt
symbol for our yearning for the eternal in that which
fades in an instant […] I introduce nature – light, wind,
and water – within a geometric and ordered architecture,
thereby awakening it to life. Climatic changes in turn
transform the condition of architecture from moment to
moment. Contrasting elements meet with startling results,
and in these results, architectural expression is born that
is capable of moving the human spirit and allows us to
glimpse the eternal within the moment. The abode of the
eternal is thus within he who perceives it.’ (Ando, 1974:
174)
The dialectical structure between eternity and
temporality presented by Ando here is not aimed at
sublimating the two absolute antinomies into a
third synthesis, but rather employs one for the
illumination of the other. The metaphor of the
flower to illuminate ‘the glimpse of the eternal
within the moment’ conjoins eternity and
temporality together not because of their apparent
similarity but because of their absolute
contradiction. The manifestation of the natural
elements in his architecture such as the courtyard
of the Azuma House, according to Ando, also brings
forth this dialectic between the eternal and the
temporal [1].
The natural elements Ando mentioned are wind,
light and rainwater. They are elements, unlike a
flower, that are without enduring profiles,
challenging the substantialist perspective that takes
a permanent profile or contour of a thing as the
evidence of its presence. As ‘an instant of light is
simultaneously the instant of that light’s own
extinguishing’ (Ando, 1990: 458), such elements at
the moment of their phenomenal presence are as
much charged with the energy of self-negation as
that of self-affirmation. They are in constant
radiation and, in reaching-out beyond themselves,
defining their ontological status as ek-stasis.1 For
Ando, in the phenomenal presence of natural
elements in absolute finitude and temporality, can
be found a sense of limitlessness and eternity,
theory arq . vol 8 . no 2 . 2004 149
150 arq . vol 8 . no 2 . 2004 theory

leading one to the sensation of the sublime. In

explaining the Church of the Light, Ando thus wrote,
‘the brilliance of a shaft of light, penetrating the
profound silence of that darkness, amounted to an
evocation of the sublime’ (Ando, 1995: 470) [2]. It is
equally the case that, as long as the phenomenal
appearance of natural elements is present,
residential architecture such as the Azuma House
operates as a locus to experience the sublime as
much as the Church of the Light does.
The adoption of typically-known and non-
figurative elements in the courtyard of the Azuma
House should be stressed in this regard. Ando’s claim
that ‘no superficial ornament’ (Ando, 1983a: 52) is
found in the courtyard testifies to his intention that
keeps such architectural elements as the walls, the
floor-to-ceiling windows and the dark stone-paved
platform from being clothed with any external
representational attributes. Because of their non-
figurative quality, the walls in the house do not
intend to be more than walls. Neither do the
windows, the doors, and the dark stone-paved
platform intend to be more than they are. These
elements do not invite any subjective deciphering 1
nor attract any particular attention as independent
objects. They do not impose their presence upon the
perceiver and instead recede to the background. It is
from the collectivity of these inconspicuous
elements that a sense of opening or emptiness
emerges. This emptiness is not concerned with
enclosing itself onto itself, but with functioning as a
capacity for a perceptual experience of profile-less
natural elements. Ando wrote:
‘In an early work, Row House, Sumiyoshi (Azuma House),
I severed in half a place for daily living composed of
austere geometry by inserting an abstract space for the
play of wind and light. I sought to inject inquiry, thereby,
into the inertia that has overtaken man’s dwelling.’
(Ando, 1993: 7)
Ando’s characterisation of the perception of natural
elements in the modest emptiness of the courtyard
of the Azuma House as evoking limitlessness and
eternity comes as a surprise. This emptiness is
unassuming in comparison with, for instance,
Boullée’s sublime Metropolitan Basilica, which
remains one of the most interesting representations
of the absolute in architecture [3]. Despite the
apparent conflicts with the representational
elements of the Classical architecture of the basilica,
the immense non-representational empty space
constitutes the decisive factor in Boullée’s strategy to
represent the Supreme Being. ‘The immensity of the
internal space’, as an ironical representation of that
2
which can not be imagined but only conceived, is
meant to offer ‘to perception the absolutely empty,
infinite, and autonomous space of God’ (Pérez-
Gómez, 1983: 142). 1 The Azuma House by
Tadao Ando:
courtyard
The empty, infinite and autonomous space of God
The depiction of this kind of vast, magnificent and 2 Church of the Light
by Tadao Ando:
awe-inspiring empty space is unmistakably one of interior
the leitmotifs of Boullée’s architecture. His Newton’s
3 Metropolitan Church
Cenotaph, whose drawings depict a seemingly by Etienne-Louis
infinite space with the play of absolute brightness Boullée

Jin Baek The sublime and the Azuma House by Tadao Ando

on the one hand and absolute darkness on the other
hand, serves as a good example [4, 5]. This kind of
spatial depiction seems to embody the striking
contrast between the omnipotence of the Supreme
Being and the impotence of the human being, who is
‘overwhelmed by the extraordinary spectacle of the
inconceivable space’ (Boullée, 1976: 91). Compared
with these cases of immense space of the sublime,
Ando’s space of emptiness is unpretentious. In the
case of the Azuma House, the courtyard (4.7m in
length by 3.3m in width by 5.1m in height) is
constructed from an ensemble of elements such as
homogenous reinforced-concrete walls, floor-to-
ceiling windows, glass doors and concrete partition
walls, all in moderate proportions [6]. The concrete
walls manifest the vestiges of the human labour
applied in their construction. The rectangular grids
appearing on their surfaces reflect the width of the
shuttering board (about 90cm by 180cm). The
regularly distributed holes mark the traces of cone
nut separators. The horizontal seams reveal each
batch of concrete pouring (about every three
metres). In addition, as compared to Boullée’s
monumental and axial symmetry, Ando’s
symmetrical composition is anything but
overwhelming. Its modest scale and the procession
from the main entrance to the courtyard, then to the
bedrooms upstairs, accessed by the stair placed at
one side of the courtyard, complements the holistic
geometrical composition with a labyrinthine spatial
experience.
In every aspect, the emptiness of the courtyard is
not designed to intimidate the occupier or to fill the
occupier with awe through the sublime of an
unknowable and majestic trans-human world. In
fact, Ando is clearly aware of what he was pursuing
with this kind of modest emptiness inscribed with
the traces of human construction:
theory arq . vol 8 . no 2 . 2004 151
‘what we got from modern architecture was a sense that
people were overwhelmed by vast spaces [horikomu,
literally, to bury]. One must envelop them instead in a
gentle environment, and in order to do this I think that
more study of people is necessary.’ (Ando, 1984: 131)
For Ando, the vast spaces of modern architecture
such as ‘the universal space’ of Mies van der Rohe
were combined with an ideal of absolute brightness.
In favour of ‘the interplay between light and dark’,
Ando asserted that vast spaces of absolute brightness
are as objectionable as those of absolute darkness,
both causing ‘the death of space’ (Ando, 1990: 471).
Accordingly, while Ando might agree with Boullée
with regard to the sense of spatial emptiness, which
is programmed on the purgation of representational
qualities from architectural elements as the essential
condition for an architecture to evoke or represent
the sublime (Lyotard, 1984: 40), Ando rejected an
explicit employment of the space of vastness as the
representation of the sublime. Instead, Ando insisted
that one would experience limitlessness and eternity
even in an unpretentious space of emptiness, the two
qualities residing in the finite and temporal
manifestation of light, wind and rainwater.
Boullée, Kant and Lyotard
Boullée’s removal of representational formal
elements from his architecture can be explained
partly by the theory of the sublime as expounded by
Immanuel Kant – Boullée’s contemporary – who
pointed out the impossibility of representing the
limitlessness and formlessness of the sublime (Kant,
2000: 129–131). Boullée corroborated this view by
largely eliminating figurative images, yet
contradicted it by presenting gigantic empty space
itself as the direct source of infinity. Boullée’s
emptiness acknowledged what Kant defined as the
impossibility of representation of the formlessness
The sublime and the Azuma House by Tadao Ando Jin Baek
152 arq . vol 8 . no 2 . 2004 theory
and limitlessness of the sublime with anything
which can be imagined. Yet, simultaneously, this
approach appears deceptive, or even absurd, for
Kant, as the locus of infinity does not lie somewhere
outside like an independent third entity, but as a
formal component within the transcendental mind
of the subject.
A further dwelling upon Kant’s theory of the
sublime in association with Boullée’s architecture is
instrumental. In the wake of Edmund Burke’s
definition of the sublime, Kant claimed that, before
emotion reaches the realm of the sublime, one
should go through and overcome the intermediary
Jin Baek The sublime and the Azuma House by Tadao Ando
phase of unpleasantness, fear, or even terror,
instigated by what is perceived.2 In order for this
negative quality to become the positive feeling of the
sublime, a suspension of terror should take place
through securing a safe place for the spectator to
stand. At this moment, the concept of infinity
residing in the transcendental mind of the subject
triumphs over the power of nature.3 This distance,
which transforms, for instance, a turbulent storm
into something enjoyable, monumentalises the
fundamental segregation of the subject from the
world (where the world is considered not as the field
of the unmediated corporeal experience but as a two-

6 conceptual infinity.
4 Newton’s Cenotaph
by Etienne-Louis
Boullée: section 1
5 Newton’s Cenotaph
by Etienne-Louis
Boullée: section 2
6 The Azuma House by
Tadao Ando: plan,
section and
axonometric
dimensional realm standing before the mastery will
of the supreme subject as the retainer of the
transcendental mind).
One should not be deceived by the figures inserted
into Boullée’s drawings, such as Newton’s Cenotaph,
and the subsequent effect of the pseudo-resolution
of the distance between the perceiver and the
depicted spatial emptiness. This is because the
subject, Boullée himself or other spectators, still
stands before the scene. What is inserted is the
disembodied shadow of the subject, not unlike what
takes place in modern virtual reality, which
simulates a presumed situation based on a non-
theory arq . vol 8 . no 2 . 2004 153
corporeal human being. The distance between the
subject and the depicted world of emptiness is
maintained so that one can transform into
something enjoyable what Jean-François Lyotard
called the terror of emptiness, which ensues from
complete illegibility and suffocating silence.
Without this distance, emptiness could end up being
nothing but a space of horror and uneasiness.4
Emptiness and the subject
This assertion could be extended further. Let us
suppose that, as Boullée might have wished, the
distance is truly taken away and the subject is within
the immense empty space. I would argue that, even
in this case, it still remains questionable whether the
perceiver would be able to ‘rejoice with trembling’
(Burke, 1998: 111) in awe of the sublime of the
emptiness, rather than terrified by its unknowable
silence, not to mention the insuperable scale with
which one cannot come to terms. The sense of the
sublime as an emotion grounded on the
epistemological horizon of the power of judgment
was possible because of the very distance between
the subject and the vast emptiness. Yet, actual bodily
engagement in the emptiness with the dissolution of
the distance could lead the perception of emptiness
to remain at the level of horror, fear, and even terror.
This is because, once the subject is in the emptiness,
the subjective power of judgment loses its ground
for operation, that is, the distance rendering the
emptiness as an object of indifferent gaze. While not
being given any alternative mode of communication,
the subject is met with the immeasurable,
unknowable boundless infinity whose eternal
silence did in fact terrify, for instance, Blaise Pascal
(Pascal, 1941: 75). In other words, the finite vastness
of Boullée’s empty space is indeed vast enough to
engulf the subjectively imagined power of the
What Ando’s architecture achieves is not a
suspension of this kind of intermediary terror. Such
suspension is not possible from the beginning
because the spatial emptiness envelops the subject
rather than securing a safe distance for disengaged
visual appreciation. The subject is enveloped by an
emptiness and is already within its panorama,
although a modest one. Yet, despite the lack of the
distance between the subject and emptiness, I would
claim that Ando’s emptiness does not put the subject
in the state of terror aroused by what Lyotard called
‘privation of objects’, and thus an ‘unknowable
emptiness’ that one cannot possibly grasp. This
overcoming of unknowability of emptiness by the
subject comes from the redefinition of the subject,
from that of the disengaged retainer of the
transcendental mind to that of the subject of
corporeality: ‘a sentient being that responds to the
world’ (Ando, 1995: 453).
The sublime and shintai
Ando privileges corporeality as the proper subjective
mode in his space, which resonates with natural
phenomena unfolding within the space. As Ando
wrote:
The sublime and the Azuma House by Tadao Ando Jin Baek
154 arq . vol 8 . no 2 . 2004 theory
‘My intent is not to express the nature of the material itself
but to employ it to establish the single intent of the space.
When light is drawn into it, cool, tranquil space
surrounded by a clearly finished architectural element is
liberated to become a soft, transparent area transcending
materials. It becomes a living space that is one with the
people inhabiting it. The actual walls cease to exist, and
the body of the beholder is aware only of the surrounding
space.’ (Ando, 1995: 453)
Ando’s use of the term ‘body’, or shintai, does not
imply a dichotomy between body and mind but
points towards a corporeal totality which he
expressed with such phrases as: ‘a union of spirit
and flesh’; ‘the totality of the human being’; and ‘a
maximum effect of equilibrium’ (Ando, 1998: 453;
Ando, 1990: 458). Ando further wrote: ‘Man is not a
dualistic being in whom spirit and flesh are
essentially distinct, but a living, corporeal being
active in the world’ (Ando, 1998: 453).
Shintai operates in a dynamic relationship with the
world and knows the phenomenal unfolding of
things of ek-stasis in emptiness through its
sensational capacity that accepts, rather than frames
and domesticates, the things. Shintai is like an iconic
instrument for the unconditioned embracement of
a thing, constituting the deepest layer in one’s
knowing of the thing. The conceptual and
predicative knowing is always an abstraction of this
concrete knowing through body. The former is a
passive knowing, while the latter is a truly active
knowing. The active dimension of knowing in the
perception through shintai lies precisely in the body’s
emptying capacity for the full manifestation of the
thing within one’s interiority. Shintai empties its
sensational capacity to be filled by the moisture,
coolness, and gaiety brought by a breeze in the
courtyard of the Azuma House. Ando thus claimed
that one’s contact with natural elements in the place
is based on the radical acceptance of things in which
‘wind and rainwater penetrate shintai’ (Ando, 1983b:
173).
In its unconditional acceptance of the
manifestation of natural elements in an emptiness,
this engaged corporeality prevents Ando’s emptiness
from being a suffocating one completely absent of
legible elements which aspires to directly represent,
as in Boullée’s architecture, the immeasurable and
eternal absolute. Rather, it verifies the emptiness as a
constitutive background that upholds one’s
perceptual engagement with the elements of ek-
stasis. The ‘privation of objects’ from emptiness, the
source of unknowability and anxiety, is replaced by
the manifestation of profile-less things in it.
Emptiness is thus destined not so much towards
asserting its independent presence as towards
functioning as a non-obtrusive stage for the
occurrence of a direct corporeal encounter between
one and the natural elements. Accordingly, in
contrast with Boullée’s space of potential terror,
Ando’s empty space is necessarily ‘on-the-way-to-
place’ (Casey, 1997: 21) where the perceptual event of
resonating with the profile-less elements of nature
takes place. Ando’s particular emptiness challenges
such an emptiness whose sublime power is secretly
Jin Baek The sublime and the Azuma House by Tadao Ando
based on the intermediary dimension of terror by
shifting the locus of infinity and eternity away from
the emptiness itself. It disaffirms the status of the
disengaged subject as the retainer of the power of
judgment, which defines the sublime ‘not to be
contained in any sensible form’ (Kant, 2000: 129-131)
but to be found only in the transcendental mind. For
Ando, the feeling of the sublime lies in one’s direct
perceptual engagement with the phenomenal
unfolding of the world, which takes place in the
temporal-spatial condition of emptiness.
Nishida and a Japanese theory of the sublime
In order to further clarify Ando’s position, I would
like to introduce a Japanese theory of the sublime
formulated by Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), the
foremost modern East Asian philosopher and the
father of the Kyoto School. In his idea of ‘the topos
of nothingness’, Nishida formulated a two-fold
structure of the ‘I’. To him, one’s corporeal
reciprocity with a natural element at a perceptual
moment is predicated upon one’s being penetrated
by the element, very much like a movement of air
would imbue one’s interiority with a distinctive
sense of coolness and gaiety. For Nishida, the
formation of one’s identity in this manner is not the
function of the intentionality of ego self, but a self-
negation of the infinite and eternal emptiness of
selfhood into a finite and temporal content.
Emptiness as the profound phase of the ‘I’ is a
concrete universal that exists prior to the
articulation of the palpable ‘I’ in resonance with the
movement of the air. In its non-differentiation,
emptiness is a horizon that synthesises, and gives
rise to, the two co-emerging identities between the
‘I’ and the breeze. The voluntary self-delimitation of
the infinity and eternity of emptiness into a palpable
presence of the ‘I’ and the breeze in absolute
temporality and finitude renders the momentary
co-emergence to weigh upon eternity and infinity:
eternity and infinity reveal themselves in
temporality and finitude (Nishida, 1947: 132-135).5
As Paul Tillich wrote for the case of the infinite, the
infinite ‘appears entirely in something finite’ in
accordance with ‘the principle of coincidence of
opposites’ (Tillich, 1987: 213).
Critical is that eternity and infinity are not simply
objective conditions external to the self, but
constitute the innermost depth of the self. The
former view is the abstraction of the latter
perspective, not vice versa (Nishida, 1947: 120-127).
Each temporal formation of selfhood weighs upon
eternity in a distinctive degree. According to Nishida,
the depth of self can be intuited at each moment of
the temporal formation of selfhood, yet complete
arrival at this depth is infinitely delayed. Nishida’s
example to support his argument is enlightening.
For instance, multiplying the number of sides of a
polygon from triangle to square, to pentagon, to
hexagon, and so on, allows us to be able to intuit into
the existence of the circle. In this intuitive
perceptual experience, each polygon is seen as a
temporal and finite negation of the ideal circle and
weighs upon the circle distinctively. To be sure, it is
 theory arq . vol 8 . no 2 . 2004 155

not that the ideal world of the perfect circle is

inferred from the observation of individual
polygons, but that the otherwise fragmentary
polygons become meaningful because there is from
the beginning the ideal world that voluntarily
negates its ideality. Paradoxically, this perceptual
advance towards the ideal realm is necessarily
coupled with an awakening into the impossibility of
reaching a perfect circle, however many sided
polygon one may imagine in this intuitive procedure
and however heavily it weighs upon the ideal world
(Nishida, 1947: 163-168). Likewise, one can infinitely
progress toward the depth of the self, its infinity and
eternity, at each distinctive moment of temporal
formation of palpable selfhood, yet arrival at this
limit point of the self is always postponed. The
sublime is an emotion shaping itself from an
intuitive awareness into infinity and eternity as the
depth of the self, which is unreachable, while
allowing infinite progress.

Emptiness as the self-negation of infinity and eternity

Two aspects can be clarified with these observations.
At one level, even in the case that infinity and
eternity are seen as objective absolute qualities, their
representation does not create something which is
seemingly infinite and eternal, as the objective
transcendence of Boullée’s architectural drawings
and the subjective transcendence of Kant’s theory of
the sublime would suggest. Rather, the
representation consists in capturing their absolute
contradictories of the phenomenal unfolding of
natural elements in a modest emptiness whose
temporal-spatial dimensions reflect, rather than
imitate, infinity and eternity through the dialectic of
self-negation. At another level, a new light is shed on
the temporal and finite formation of selfhood in the
perceptual experience enacted in the modest
emptiness. This perception of complete acceptance
of the other leads one to an awakening into the sheer
feeling of the present and being here as self-
delimitation of the unreachable depth of the self, or
the topos of infinite and eternal nothingness.
With respect to the first aspect, special attention
should be paid to Ando’s claim that emptiness is not
given from the beginning, but is born at each
moment of interplay between light and dark (Ando, 7
1990: 471). In the courtyard of the Azuma House, one
7 Mu-chi, Swallow on a
emptiness is continually replaced by another. Each Lotus Pod
emptiness renews the sense of the present and the
sense of being here, by moving from the present to
the present, not from the past to the present and nor subjective experience (Nishida, 1947: 140-143, 165-
from the present to the future. As a line drawn on a 167). To conclude, each presence of emptiness in the
blackboard is charged with an inertia towards its courtyard of the Azuma House is a self-delimitation
ideal world of the infinite line (Nishida, 1947: 141), and self-negation of infinity and eternity.
each emptiness revealing itself at the moment of In this regard, a comparison between Ando’s and
interplay as a broken piece of infinity and eternity Boullée’s approaches to the representation of the
leads the occupant to the experience of infinity and absolute is further instrumental. Boullée believed
eternity. To iterate: it is not that the ideal world is that a direct imitation of the infinite space is
inducted from the observation of a finite possible. A spatial emptiness with a great dimension
phenomenon, but that experience of the infinite is a ‘powerful cause of sublime’, and he therefore
from the perception of the finite is possible because depicted an empty space that is seemingly infinite. In
there is from the beginning the ideal world of Boullée’s hand, infinity defines and determines the
infinity, as the trans-subjective background of the form – or paper space – and content – or vast space –

The sublime and the Azuma House by Tadao Ando Jin Baek
156 arq . vol 8 . no 2 . 2004 theory

of the representation in a literal way. He thus
remained the master of this heroic and visionary
subject of creation. In contrast, the intimate
emptiness of the courtyard of the Azuma House
exists as a self-negation of the ideal world of infinity.
Only through this contradictory binding of the
infinite and the finite, mediated through reciprocal
self-negation, the finitude of the empty space mirrors
rather than replicates infinity. Just as the hermetic
bird in Mu-chi’s Swallow on a Lotus Pod brings to
Shinichi Hisamatsu ‘an infinite echo reverberating
from a single thing’ (Hisamatsu, 1971: 34), so does
Ando’s empty space [7]. The ideal world of infinity is
glimpsed through the finite emptiness of Ando’s
architecture that sets up a mutual reflection
between the finitude and infinitude. Unlike Boullée,
Ando did not have to produce a seemingly infinite,
gigantic empty space to evoke infinity. Rather, he
created a finite space, like a short line drawn on a
blackboard.
Infinity and eternity as the depth of the self
Again, infinity and eternity are not merely objective
ideas of a distant ideal world, but
the very unreachable depth of the self. Ando was
intuitively aware of this at the moment when he
wrote that the ‘abode of the eternal is thus within he
who perceives it’ (Ando, 1995: 474). The shift in the
perspective toward infinity and eternity, from being
external to the problem of the self to being internal
to it, brings to the surface our finite and temporal
human condition. In the perceptual acceptance of
the phenomenal presence of natural elements in the
emptiness of Ando’s architecture, the elements do
not remain at the margin of our body but penetrate
the interiority of the perceiver, imbuing him or her,
in the case of light, with its intensity, brightness, and
lightness.6 According to Nishida, this moment of
corporeal resonance of the perceiver with the light,
to acquire the content of his or her interiority, comes
into being because the perceiver voluntarily empties
his selfhood to be filled by the light. Such a
perception of self-negation involves the dimension
of the religious overturning of the self in which,
according to Nishida, one dies at each present
moment of accepting the other into his interiority.
Ironically, it is through this dying that the depth of
non-ego and its infinity and eternity can be
glimpsed. The fundamental agonies, troubles and
paradoxes of life lie in the fact that without going
through the negation of the finite ego-self, no
unison with the horizon of infinity and eternity is
possible.
Arrival at the world of eternity and infinity is
proportional to the negation of the finite and
temporal ego-self in search for the true phase of the
‘I’ as ‘non-I’, to become the instrument of accepting
the other as the content of one’s own selfhood. The
sublime is the feeling that arises when the
renunciation of ego-self progresses, yet its
completion is always infinitely postponed. What
matters in this sublime sensation is indeed self-
preservation, as Kant claimed. Yet, unlike Kant’s
theory, the sublime in the empty space of Ando’s
architecture as the stage for the perception of
natural elements is not concerned with maintaining
physical life before a terrifying scene, but
renouncing the ego-self to paradoxically acquire a
glimpse into the boundless and eternal horizon of
non-ego.

Notes
1. The elements are phenomenally
present, but cannot be said existent
from the substantialist perspective.
Such things of invisible presence
challenge, on the one hand, the
Democritian atomistic tradition of
things as equipped with
substantiality and as identifiable
with a fixed point in space and, on
the other, the Aristotelian tradition
that takes thing ‘as a normative
subject of a sentence’ that ‘bears its
contents and determinations as
predicates’ (Ogawa, 1998: 105). The
things favoured by Ando overturn
these perspectives by letting their
appearance overcome their
presumed substantiality.
2. Lyotard claimed that it is this aspect
which Kant ‘ransacked’ from
Edmund Burke’s theory of the
sublime (Lyotard, 1984 :40; Burke,
1998: 86, 101-102, 107-108).
3. Kant wrote: ‘Bold, overhanging, as it
were threatening cliffs, thunder
clouds towering up into the
heavens, bringing with them
flashes of lightning and crashes of
thunder, volcanoes with their all-
destroying violence, hurricanes
with the devastation they leave
behind, the boundless ocean set
into a rage, a lofty waterfall on a
mighty river, etc, make our capacity
to resist into an insignificant trifle
in comparison with their power.
But the sight of them only becomes
all the more attractive the more
fearful it is, as long as we find
ourselves in safety, and we gladly
call these objects sublime because
they elevate the strength of our soul
above its usual level, and allow us to
discover within ourselves a capacity
for resistance of quite another kind,
which gives us the courage to
measure ourselves against the
apparent all-powerfulness of
nature’ (Kant, 2000: 144-145).
4. Lyotard maintained that Kant, in
his idea of the sublime, accepted
Burke’s idea that ‘the sublime is
kindled by the threat that nothing
further might happen’. Unlike
beauty, which gives a positive
pleasure, the sublime is
accompanied with this tenseness of
the possible physical danger
looming with death. Lyotard
further connected this dimension
of threat with the effect of terror
caused by the privation of what is
conventionally expected: ‘privation
of others, terror of solitude,
privation of language, terror of
silence, privations of objects, terror
of emptiness, privation of life,
terror of death’ (Lyotard, 1984: 40).
5. According to Nishida, the present
arises not from the linear
continuum from the past towards
the future, but from the depth of
the eternal nothingness that
delimits itself into ‘the-I-who-is-
feeling-a-breeze’ at a moment. Only
when this depth of the present,
which he called ‘the eternal present
(eien no ima)’, has fixed itself into a
palpable present do the past and
the future come into being, not vice
versa: the present emerges not from
the past, nor from the future, but
from its own unfathomable depth.
The present cannot be thought of in
order for it to be truly present; once
it is thought of, it is already the

Jin Baek The sublime and the Azuma House by Tadao Ando

past. Nor can it be uttered as ‘the
present’, since once uttered, it is not
present any more; yet, it can be
sensed. Since ‘the past has already
been rationalized and the future is
to be rationalized’, the true
moment for the rationalization of
the irrational depth of the self lies
neither in the past nor in the
future. It consists in the sheer
present, present not as a node
between the past and the future but
instead equipped with an
independent depth of ‘the eternal
present (eien no ima)’. Nishida
further wrote: ‘Our world does not
move from the past to the future.
The past streams towards the
present, and the future moves
towards the present. Our world
emerges from the present and
returns to the present. The time
which has been fixed as the present
is not the present, but is already the
past, and the future has not yet
arrived. In this sense, the present
cannot be grasped. However, one
can think of the past and the future
by the present (of eternity) which
delimits itself into a present’
(Nishida: 1947, 132–135).
6. In explaining his Church of Light,
Ando wrote: ‘light that, hollowing
out darkness and piercing our
bodies, blows life into “place”. It was
space constructed of such light as
this that I sought, for example, in
Church of the Light’ (Ando, 1995:
471). This kind of expression is also
found in his essay ‘To Luis Barragán’
in which he wrote: ‘In my travels as
a young man I strolled through the
mazelike expanses within the
cavernous medieval Christian
monasteries belonging to the
Cistercian order. Through a myriad
apertures, light pierced the
darkness, leaving an impression
burned in my mind that I
remember clearly to this day.
Pervading those solemn and
dignified spaces, the light
penetrated directly to my soul – a
harsh light but at the same time a
gentle, mesmerising light’ (Ando,
2001: 12).
References
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Translation by Toshio Okumura
in: Frampton, K. (ed), (1984). Tadao
Ando Buildings Projects and Writings,
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Illustration credits
arq gratefully acknowledges:
Mitsuo Matsuoka, courtesy of Tadao
Ando Architect and Associates, 1
Tadao Ando Architect and
Associates, 2, 6
Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
3, 4, 5
Shinichi Hisamatsu, 7
Despite continued efforts, the
author has not been able to locate
the owner of the copyright for
Figure 7. It is ambiguous as to
whether copyright exists for the
painting. The author has no
intention to make improper use
of the image for this paper.
Biography
Jin Baek is an Assistant Professor
at the School of Architecture and
Community Design, University of
South Florida, where he teaches
design studio, history and theory
of architecture.
Author’s address
Professor Jin Baek
University of South Florida
3702 Spectrum Blvd.,
Suite 180
Tampa, FL 33612
USA
Jin Baek
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.