The Sayama Forest Chapel in Saitama, Japan by Japanese architect Hiroshi Nakamura has a  “V” shape timber structure inspired in traditional Japanese structures called “Gassho-zukuri”.

Hiroshi Nakamura creates a highly durable wooden structure taking care of environmental issues in a forested vicinity. The chapel is designed to facilitate spiritual reflection by focusing on the vertical. By tilting the walls inward, the building leaves plenty of room for adjacent trees to grow freely. The steep angular roof is clad in thousands of cast-aluminium shingles with each one made by hands of local craftsmen. The ripple-like roof texture emerges from the ground as an extension of the forest, and grows out of seven bays located around the perimeter.

“The site itself is in front of a deep forest, and when I visited for the first time, I envisioned an architecture that could reflect on the way of life as it lives by the water conserved by the forest, and eventually returns to this place after death. So I found the subject of prayer that is mutual to all religions in the forest, which led to conceptualizing the architecture that prays to the forest while being surrounded by trees”.