St. Mary of the Angels Chapel Mecanoo Architecten

With its impressive roof, its golden ceiling and wave-like ”moving” wall, the new Rotterdam chapel exhibits the sensual elements of the baroque. The intimate inner room has an aura of contemplative stillness and austerity. The stone foundation walls of the old neo-Gothic chapel form the pedestal for the new building – as a ”footprint” so to speak.

St. Mary of the Angels Chapel

Design Team: Mecanoo Architecten

Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Status: Completion July 2001

The Catholic ”St. Lawrence” cemetery was designed by Dutchman H.J. van der Brink and opened in 1865. As in the ”campo santo”, a sacred Italian cemetery, the chapel is situated in the middle of the grounds in the centre of a star-shaped system of paths connecting the graves. However, van der Brink’s chapel, designed in the neo-Gothic style, was unable to withstand the poor soil conditions of the location, and in 1963 the old building was replaced with a new one. The new chapel was erected on top of the original cellar vaults in the form of a copper covered cone. When the old vaults were no longer able to bear the burden, Mecanoo Architecten was commissioned to design the ”chapel of their dreams” in November 1998.

What is the proper form for a new, twenty-first century chapel in a nineteenth-century Roman Catholic cemetery in Rotterdam? Mecanoo’s answer is that it should be timeless – a contemporary structure that looks like a jewel case, an extraordinary building like a precious casket, with beautiful light inside and a shaft of light, and a remarkable roof with a heavenly gold ceiling. The chapel should be designed as part of a ceremony, of a journey undertaken, in this last resting place designed as a campo santo. After entering the chapel the ceremony takes place, after which the procession continues through another door. Indoors the atmosphere must always be intimate regardless of the number of people attending. Finally the chapel is built on a site with a history that needs to remain visible.

The chapel consists of a space without any pillars. The organic form inspires meditation: a continuous curving wall without any windows and apparently without doors, raised 70 centimetres above the ground. The wall is deep blue and contains texts from the Requiem mass in many languages, alluding to the fact that the cemetery is located in a multicultural neighbourhood. The entrance and the exit situated opposite one another form part of the wall and are executed as pivoted doors. The roof floats like a slightly folded sheet of paper over the structure. The golden ceiling is lit from within by a lamp. Light enters the building both through the sheet of glass at the plinth and through the strip under the roof. A shaft of light enters the chapel through an opening in the roof, and is accentuated when incense is burned. In the floor, inlaid stone elements indicate the spots for the congregation and for the priest. The chapel is crowned with a modest bell tower.

The chapel is located centrally in the cemetery. Two previous chapels have stood on this site – a neo-Gothic structure of 1880 and a pyramid-shaped building of 1963. Both structures collapsed due to poor foundations in the soft soil. The new chapel has been given a solid foundation within the bounds of the original chapel. This results in a chapel with a palimpsest-like nature. The ground plan of the first chapel becomes visible in the soil by exposing remains of its wall. The soil is as though it were scratched away after which the new chapel has been planted on its surface.

via Mecanoo Architecten

Continue reading...

White Chapel by Aoki Jun

Architecture often separates structure and decoration,but in this chapel there is no border between these two elements.

White Chapel, Hyatt Regency Osaka
Design Team: Aoki Jun
Location: Hyatt Regency Osaka
When to visit: Completed 2006

White Chapel is a small chapel built within the site of Hyatt Regency Osaka. It is used for wedding ceremonies and accommodates 80 people. The structure consists of square steel rings 60cm in diameter, with sides of 25mm, which are interlocked three-dimensionally.

The ring components were inspired by the shape of a tetrahedron. Its flat planes were replaced with rings, connected at their edges. Although the structure uses rings to create diamond-like shapes, the two most common symbols of marriage, Aoki says this is a happy coincidence: “I just pursued a beautiful geometrical shape.”

The three-dimensional layout of the ring corresponds to the array of the circle, inscribed in the 4 regular hexagons within the unit. Steel rings are welded together, forming a foam-like three-dimensional grid which is mainly occupied by voids. This not only supports the roof but is also used to assist the glass exterior as MPG System. Inside the grid, a double-layered woven screen of white organdy is hung.

By day sunlight enters the chapel through the six-metre-high network of rings. At night, it is illuminated by fluorescent strip lighting along the top and bottom of the wall, along with recessed halogen down lights, creating a glowing reflection in the lake.

These sensuous qualities probably account for the great success of the chapel: in its first year, more than 200 weddings have taken place there.





via Aoki Jun

Continue reading...

The Matrimandir/ Auroville by Roger Anger

Auroville is a universal township where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities.

The Matrimandir/ Auroville
Design Team: Roger Anger
Location: Tamil Nadu, India
When to visit: Weekdays- 10 am to 1 pm, 2 pm to 4.30 pm, Sundays- 10 am to 1 pm only. Access to Auroville and Matrimandir is free of charge.

Auroville is a planned universal township for up to 50,000 people under development in south east India. Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity. In its centre, next to the great Banyan tree, there is an enormous golden ball called Matrimandir, in Sanskrit, means "Temple of the Divine Mother".

It was the brainchild of Mirra Alfassa, a French citizen of Ottoman-Egyptian origin, known in Auroville simply as 'The Mother'. The man charged with building that city was a French architect and urban planner called Roger Anger. A futurist and part of the Parisian avant-garde scene, he was best known for building what was at the time the tallest residential complex in Europe, the 98m-high Ile Verte in Grenoble.




In close coordination with The Mother, Anger drew up the master plan for a galaxy-shaped city. It was divided into four sectors that spiraled outwards from a central Peace Zone, in the middle of which stood the Matrimandir. Matrimandir’s inner chamber is the conceptualization of Mother’s vision. She actually visualized each and every dimension of this structure .The globe structure as a whole was designed by Architect Roger Anger.

Suspended several metres above a lotus pool on four massive supports, the 36m-diameter Matrimandir or Temple of the Mother, is a giant geodesic sphere. Its outer surface is covered in huge, gold mosaic-clad concave discs, a little like inverted frisbecs. Its inner surface is covered in an opaque fabric that tints the light filtering into the cavernous interior with a warm orange glow.

At the end of the two slender glass and white marble ramps that spiral 20m high in the interior of the sphere, there is a room. Inside it, 12 white marble columns emerge from plush white carpet, but they do not support the ceiling. In the centre of the ceiling there is an opening, through which a beam of white light shines down into a perfectly spherical, 70cm Zeiss crystal ball placed in the centre of the room. The light illuminates the ball, capturing the images of the people sitting around the room cross-legged. It then passes through an aperture beneath it. through the cavernous space below and out of the base of the sphere, where the reflection bounces off the lotus pool beneath.




Surrounding the sphere are 12 red sandstone 'petals' containing 12 egg-shaped, windowless meditation chambers, painted in 12 vibrant colours. A white marble platform is suspended in the middle of the chamber. There are small round white cushions on the floor. A light on the wall facing the platform serves as a focus. The space is secular. There are no statues, images or mantras.

The Matrimandir is the psychic heart of Auroville. From above, it resembles a giant bud. Viewed from the ground, its sandstone chambers closely resemble stylized clods of earth, pushed up by the sphere as it exits the earth. From here, the Matrimandir seems a shining new world, captured in the process of being born.




Photo credits: theflame | dharmasphere
via Auroville

Continue reading...

St. Henry's Ecumenical Art Chapel by Sanaksenaho Architects

‘The idea came during a fishing trip in Lapland. The fish shape harks back to the symbol used by the early Christians, who adopted the Greek word Ikthus (‘fish’) as sign of recognition. The boat is also an important symbol for the project, expressing the idea of community travelling towards the same goal’

St. Henry's Ecumenical Art Chapel
Design Team: Matti Sanaksenaho of Sanaksenaho Architects
Location: Turku, Finland
Cost: € 600000
When to visit: Monday to Friday: 11 - 16; Thursday: 11 - 18.30; Saturday and Sunday: 12 - 15

St. Henry's Ecumenical Art Chapel is placed in the landscape like religious buildings traditionally were. Outside the city of Turku, it stands upon a hillock amidst pines and spruces on the island of Hirvensalo, an area characterised by open fields and wooded hillocks. The shape of the building follows the contours of the site. The gradually forming green patina of the copper cladding blends in with the colour of the pine trees. Amidst the buildings of an activity centre, the chapel resembles an old village church.

The entrance to the east-west oriented church is from the western end. The permeating idea is that of a quiet journey towards the east, the altar. The lighting, too, confirms this idea. One walks from darkness towards light from a hidden source. The elongated nave is organised in two parts, the chapel in the front part and the gallery at the back. The visitor can study the works of art during the service. The arrangement is familiar from Renaissance churches.




The chapel is constructed like an upturned boat. Another layer of recollection is that of a herringbone. The loadbearing structure consists of tapering ribs made of glued-lasminated pine. Rising at two-meters intervals, they give the building a natural, organic form. Between the ribs there is a curved interior lining of ten-centimeters wide, untreated pine boarding. In the course of time, natural light will turn the tone of the timber to a reddish color. The floor boards, twenty-centimeters wide and five-centimeters thick pine planks have been nailed to the joists and run parallel to the space. The floor is waxed and makes a clicking sound like the floors of old churches when you walk inside. The vestry furniture, vestibule benches and hat rack are made of solid, edge-laminated common alder.

Since the client was a union of several different churches - Lutheran, Catholic and Orthodox,the symbolic fish form serves to unite all the various churches involved in the chapel while the interior has powerful references to the Bible tale of Jonah in the whale’s belly. Even the exterior of the chapel covered with glimmering copper plates applied in a pattern suggesting fish scales are supporting the overall impression of that creature.





While the impressive fish volume appears rather compact and enclosed from the outside, the experience changes radically while entering the entrance at the western gable. A magnificent high pointed interior composed of laminated pine beams are meeting dramatically in a ridge almost ten times the height of a human. At the bottom of the mayor space the aisle is spatially separated from the nave of the church by secondary spaces hid in two wooden boxes intersected by a rampart moving upwards. Along the sides of the rampart restrooms, an office as well as a staircase leading up to the choir balcony are hiding.



Sanaksenaho has restrained the wooden cross at the altar so it almost appears camouflaged since he didn’t want the religious symbols to be too intrusive. Instead he provided a naked interior for quiet speak in order to allow greater space for the visitors’ own reflections.

The chapel's patinated altar is the last public work of academician and sculptor Kain Tapper. In the altar window is a work by artist Hannu Konola, and light filters through it onto the altar wall.






Photo credits: Ettubrute | Jussi Tiainen
via Rockwool | Museum of Architecture | Sanaksenaho Architects

Continue reading...