For millennia people have sought out places to visit where they can get away from the bustle of everyday life. Architecture has the ability to create moments of calm – think of how you feel when you stop at the threshold of an awe-inspiring hall, pause for a moment of contemplation in a city cathedral or clamber into a sauna in the middle of a Scandinavian winter. The fast pace of modern life means that there’s a greater need for such places than ever. That’s why Monocle has journeyed across the globe to bring you this selection of outstanding buildings that offer somewhere for our thoughts to drift – and give us space to breathe.

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1.
A place of meditation
Kohtei art pavilion
Fukuyama, Japan

Nothing quite prepares the first-time viewer for the sight of Kohtei. Set in lush green hills to the west of the Japanese city of Fukuyama, the Buddhist meditation pavilion has a mysterious air, appearing to hover above a sea of stones. That was exactly the intention of Kohei Nawa, the contemporary artist who created the design. “Kohtei was designed to resemble a ship floating in the mountains,” says Nawa, who worked on the pavilion with architects Yoshitaka Lee and Yuichi Kodai as part of an art collective, Sandwich. 

The maritime echoes were no accident. The 1960s Zen temple of Shinshoji, in whose grounds Kohtei was completed in 2016, was founded by the president of Tsuneishi, a shipbuilding company based nearby. But the subject also offered a gracefulness to the project. Drafting in craftsmen from the area, Nawa and the two architects had 590,000 pieces of Sawara cypress layered on top of each other using a traditional roofing technique called kokera-buki. In spite of the building’s size, stretching to some 45 metres in length, the delicate wooden shingles give the hull-like structure a sense of lightness.

Then there is the sensation of entering the pavilion: plunging into total darkness is an immediate shock to the visitor’s system. “The idea was to create a meditative experience by interpreting Zen through contemporary art,” says Nawa. “The interior expresses an ‘ocean of consciousness’ through installations of water and light. In the darkness, faint light and rippling waves flicker, allowing visitors to engage in a quiet sensory experience that sharpens their senses.” The duration of the installation is set to 25 minutes, the same length of time it takes for a meditation candle used in Zen practice to burn out. Visitors emerge discombobulated by what is an unexpectedly profound experience. Without trying, they have touched on the simplicity and impermanence that is at the heart of Zen. “This work emerges as a space where the external and the internal; the hard and the soft; and architecture and art resonate with each other in harmony,” says Nawa.

While the surrounding Shinshoji temple and gardens open a door to Zen, Kohtei is perhaps the most effective route into the Buddhist meditation practice. And there is much it can offer in the modern world, not least a way to switch off from our busy, overstimulated lives.
szmg.jp

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2.
A place to respect the dead
Sexto Pantéon 
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hidden in the underbelly of the vast, flat plain of the Chacarita neighbourhood cemetery in Buenos Aires, the subterranean Sexto Pantéon (Sixth Pantheon) is a quiet, contemplative place of burial. Designed by Ítala Fulvia Villa, one of Argentina’s first active female architects and a keen urbanist who helped to shape the capital, its structure is a radical departure from traditional expectations of funerary architecture.

On the surface of the cemetery’s 95-hectare plot (which makes it one of the largest in the world) there is little indication of what lies beneath. Since construction was completed in 1958, it has been largely overlooked by those seeking an architectural pilgrimage due to the lack of visible structure. But those who do visit find themselves at first surrounded by angular lawns and an expanse of sky. Occasional monolithic concrete structures stem upwards, resembling familiar mausoleums. “When you approach the central stairway, however, a new curiosity is immediately fired up,” says Léa Namer, author of 2024’s Chacarita Moderna – the first major written work to highlight the necropolis and chronicle Villa’s story. “From above, you begin to see strange elements that entice you to make the descent. You see the darkness, the shadows. You spot the full-sized trees growing underground.”

Passing down into the necropolis via its labyrinthine stairway is a sensory experience. “You enter an intermediary world,” says Namer. “It’s suddenly cold. The light changes. All sound falls away.” With those shifts come bigger existential realisations: the scale of the resting place, home to more than 150,000 bodies, must be confronted. “The architect achieved something remarkable. Through her designs, spatial planning and choices of material, Villa makes the visitor ask themselves some really, really big questions.”

Time spent under the earth is dedicated to silence, paying respects or gaining perspective. But what follows is what the Ancient Greeks called anabasis – the return to the land of the living. In myth, this is an important act; one that distinguishes the person who has a choice to leave from those who are forced to stay. Visitors returning to the surface from Villa’s Sixth Pantheon might even bring back a greater appreciation for life itself.
chacaritamoderna.com

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3.
A place to switch off the city noise
Löyly sauna
Helsinki, Finland

According to the latest UN World Happiness Report, published in March, the Finns are the happiest nation on Earth. Perhaps this has something to do with the country’s three-million-plus saunas. Not only do the heated rooms provide a space to cleanse and purge, but they also present the chance for a moment of solitude and reflection. 

The sensation of stepping away from the stresses of daily life isn’t confined to the countryside either, as evidenced by urban saunas such as Löyly, near the harbour in Helsinki’s Hernesaari neighbourhood. “When we set about creating Löyly, the goal was to offer residents a place to check out of the hectic pace of life,” its co-founder Jasper Pääkkönen tells monocle. “We are inundated in modern society and our phones are constantly buzzing. But once you’re in the sauna, it’s just you for an hour or two.” 

Opened in 2016,  Löyly’s design plays a key role in setting up the sauna as a sanctuary. Shielded from the outside world by a pinewood shell, the rooms are kept dim, even in summer. Like the best saunas, it feels spartan, with the focus centred on the heat – löyly is a Finnish word describing hot steam evaporating from sauna stones. The mysterious ambience is accentuated by the use of wood within.

What might surprise some is that this space for solitary reflection has become one of Helsinki’s most popular attractions. As Pääkkönen points out, there’s something  refreshingly down-to-earth about spaces where people are stripped of clothes and accessories, as well as wealth and status. “There are no distractions in the sauna,” says Pääkkönen. Instead, the world outside fades and time passes at a different speed. “I can’t think of a setting better suited to contemplation,” he says.
loylyhelsinki.fi

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4.
A place for creative reflection
Kimbell Art Museum 
Fort Worth, USA

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, is the kind of place you could visit for the building alone. Though the collection is highly impressive, with some 375 works by artists including Claude Monet and Michelangelo, the Louis Kahn-designed building is the real masterpiece. Opened in 1972, it was the last project that the Estonian-born American architect completed before he died. According to museum director Eric Lee, it was also Kahn’s personal favourite. With concrete vaults bathed in the bright Texas sun, walls clad in travertine (the same as used in the Getty Museum) and elements of cork and white oak, it invites tranquillity. “It is a place of serenity,” says Lee. 

The feeling of calm washes over visitors from the moment they set foot on the 3.9-hectare property, which is dotted with tall elm and yaupon holly trees. “It starts outdoors on the grounds,” says Lee, identifying the gentle bubbling sound of water from the fountain as a source of peacefulness. Deeper within the building, the Texas light becomes more subdued. “It’s a blend of natural and artificial light, so both cold and warm,” says Lee. “It’s very inward looking.” Some might consider the concrete vaults to be brutalist in design but Lee says that this is not the case. “It was built at a time when brutalist architecture was the dominant mode but this is not a brutalist building,” he says, adding that Kahn’s prerogative was to make it welcoming. “It is human scale.”

The structure has a modernist feel but it also strikes a balance between contemporary and classic styles. “Kahn was very much inspired by ancient architecture,” says Lee. Inside, the cool space calls for a natural hush. “I never hear people raising their voices,” he says. “You speak in a whisper because it feels like a holy space, in the non-religious sense. It’s very spiritual.” More than that, it invites visitors to slow down and immerse themselves in an entirely different world for a couple of hours. “It offers an opportunity for people to take a break from ordinary life,” says Lee. “It’s magical.”
kimbellart.org

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5.
A place to reflect
Chapelle du Rosaire à Vence
Vence, France

French artist Henri Matisse designed the Chapelle du Rosaire à Vence in 1951 but its merit is more than purely ecclesiastical. Indeed, its atheist creator, who had limited experience working with religious art, became disillusioned by divinity after cancer confined him to a wheelchair. This sanctuary in Vence was actually a token of gratitude for Monique Bourgeois, the night nurse who dedicated herself to overseeing his convalescence before becoming a Dominican nun in a convent that lacked a chapel. It was an opportunity that the French artist found himself impossible to turn down despite the limitations of his health. “Matisse had carte blanche within the constraints of such a place of worship,” Gaëlle Teste de Sagey, manager of Matisse’s chapel, tells monocle. Fatigued and unwell, he was forced to work slowly and the project took four long years to complete. But the result is a remarkable alliance between faith and artistic endeavour.

Regarded as Matisse’s architectural chef-d’oeuvre, it was the first time that the artist had created a monument in its totality. “Matisse saw the relationship between the objects as little worlds that fit together,” says Teste de Sagey. From the altar and crucifix to the ceramic murals featuring the figures of the Madonna and Saint Dominique, as well as the colourful vestments of priests, Matisse dedicated his final years to this deeply personal and reflective work. Under the guidance of French architect Auguste Perret,  a master of reinforced concrete, Matisse designed the L-shaped chapel’s two narrow naves in modest proportions due to the steep terrain on which the chapel is perched. Just 15 metres long by six metres wide, the glory is in its artistic value rather than its size.

But this doesn’t detract from the chapel’s grandeur. “Matisse made every effort to give an impression of elevation,” says Teste de Sagey. Opting for a pared-back colour palette for the chapel’s 15 stained-glass windows, Matisse used blue inspired by the surrounding Côte d’Azur, yellow for sunlight – a divine glow that reaches every corner of the chapel – and distinctive green palm-leaf motifs as a reminder of the lush nature of the Riviera, which he appreciated from his window during his recovery. “The organ-pipe shape of the windows is very significant in a chapel with no organ,” says Teste de Sagey. “It corresponds with Matisse’s idea that the musicality in his chapel would come from the luminosity.”

The dappled Provençal rays that dance around the chapel’s white-tiled interior still offer a sense of hope. “Matisse found the silent rhythm of the reflections in the stained-glass windows immensely soothing,” says Teste de Sagey. And so will anyone visiting today.
chapellematisse.fr