Detail of the project ed. 2016

chapel-of-our-lady-of-the-most-holy-trin­i­­ty / Dun­can G. Stroik Archi­tect, LLC

Design­er	Dun­can Stroik
Loca­tion	Thomas Aquinas Col­lege, San­ta Paula, California
Design Team	Dun­can G. Stroik Archi­tect LLC 218 West Wash­ing­ton Street, Suite 1200 South Bend, Indi­ana 46601 Ras­mussen & Assoc. 248 S. Mills Road Ven­tu­ra, Cal­i­for­nia 93003
Year	2009
Pho­to credits	Exte­ri­or 01 — Stephen Schafer Exte­ri­or 02 — Stephen Schafer Exte­ri­or 03 — Stephen Schafer Exte­ri­or 04 — Stephen Schafer Exte­ri­or 05 — Stephen Schafer Inte­ri­or 01 — Stephen Schafer Inte­ri­or 02 — Stephen Schafer Inte­ri­or 03 — Stephen Schafer Inte­ri­or 04 — Stephen Schafer Inte­ri­or 05 — Stephen Schafer

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Nes­tled among the Topa Topa moun­tains of Cal­i­for­nia, an arcad­ed cam­pus is com­posed as an aca­d­e­m­ic vil­lage. Arriv­ing from across the moun­tains it appears as a Shangri-La, pro­tect­ed, beau­ti­ful and serene. Archi­tec­tural­ly it is a pure white dove land­ed amid a ver­dant pasture.
A sacred build­ing, antic­i­pat­ed from the foun­da­tion of the col­lege, it har­mo­nizes with the exist­ing build­ings while crown­ing the over­all design and set­ting the stan­dard for future expan­sion. The archi­tect faced the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing a tem­ple that would incor­po­rate an exist­ing path­way while express­ing spir­i­tu­al aspi­ra­tions. Ana­gog­i­cal­ly, the white bar­que sails across the val­ley, a gate of par­adise that is also a con­tem­po­rary inter­pre­ta­tion of a tri­umphal arch. An elab­o­rate thresh­old is con­struct­ed through stairs, a ter­raz­za, and a low bar­rel-vault­ed exo-narthex.
There is a sense of pro­ces­sion in the inte­ri­or, anal­o­gous to the visitor’s own jour­ney through life. Mono­lith­ic bot­ti­ci­no shafts line the navis while orthog­o­nal gen­era artic­u­late the walls, with a crescen­do at the head and heart of the body. At the heart, the pro­ces­sion­al axis is inter­rupt­ed by the axis mun­di in which the dome of heav­en is giv­en con­crete form. Like­wise, in the head, a cubic form of bronze shel­ters the pure white mar­ble block. The con­cav­i­ty in both plan and sec­tion defines a type of sanc­tum sanc­to­rum that has been unveiled to all includ­ing its tow­er-like ark.
Is not the spir­i­tu­al beau­ti­ful­ly expressed by the lumi­nous? Here the heart and mind rise to the eter­nal through the use of pure uncol­ored light. An inti­ma­tion of the time­less, it is a chapel for philoso­phers, whose bod­ies dwell with­in a cere­bral world of thought and idea. Col­or has lit­tle place here except to offer calm punc­tu­a­tion. Per­ma­nence is vis­i­ble in the shap­ing of nat­ur­al stone, the cast­ing of met­als and the carv­ing of plas­ter. All with­in a vol­ume poet­i­cal­ly shaped like the hull of a ship, with a sail-like ceil­ing, ready to cast off toward the heavens.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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