The St. Mary's Cathedral, Tokyo, designed by Kenzō Tange, dates from 1964. Kenzo Tange won the competition for the reconstruction of this church in 1961. It was built with assistance from Wilhelm Schlombs, architect to the Archdiocese of Cologne, the engineer Yoshikatsu Tsuboi, who worked with Tange on many of his projects and the Zurich architect Max Lechner.

The concept of this structure is taken of the form of a bird with wings outstretched, this concept looked simple but to execute it was not easy especially with the form which consisted of 8 hyperbolic parabolas elements started out as walls which surrounds the rhombus plan of the cathedral and as it moves up curves as a roof to make a cross above the plan which moves on vertically on the 4 sides along the facade and is covered with glass which let the natural skylight fall on the inside and looks beautiful from the outside.

The walls which are covered from the cladding of stainless steel and galvanized aluminium held together by iron bolts give it a monochromatic appearance but changes as the last ray of sunlight fall on the shiny reflecting surface of the 40 m towering structure giving it an ethereal shimmer. And like many Roman Catholic churches has a rectangular-shaped bell tower with similar concrete façade a few meters away which complements the rhombus plan, along with a baptistery in the front acts as a transitional space for the people to access the heavenly space all integrated in a way that it looks like one single entity.