Detail of the project ed. 2016

capela-jesus-mestre / Site Spe­cif­ic, arqui­tec­tura Lda

Design­er	Patrí­cia Mar­ques e Paulo Costa
Loca­tion	Apelação — Loures, Portugal
Design Team	Patrí­cia Mar­ques (archi­tect) Paulo Cos­ta (archi­tect) Bar­tolomeu de Gus­mão (art work) Paulo Pires do Vale (con­sul­tant) Nuno Gus­mão (con­sul­tant)
Year	2015
Pho­to credits	all pho­tos — do mal o menos . Eduar­do Nasci­men­to / João Fôja

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

This is a chapel, or a small church, built in a par­tic­u­lar house for par­tic­u­lar peo­ple – the broth­er­hood of Insti­tu­to Mis­sionário Pio Sociedade de São Paulo. The project brief is based on prin­ci­ples that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly con­cur: it should be the cen­tral area for a house of many homes; a space for prayer and for com­mu­ni­ca­tion; a place of inti­ma­cy as well as assembly.
The project reuses the exist­ing build­ing and aims to pro­vide it with a new mean­ing; this is done through a process of aus­tere and rig­or­ous design­ing, which relies on the sim­plic­i­ty of vol­umes, nat­ur­al light­ing and inher­ent qual­i­ties of pro­posed mate­ri­als. The con­crete struc­ture is retained, bare and imper­fect but suit­able nev­er­the­less, and some­how up-lift­ed by the new con­text. The room is revealed as a whole and wide space, with­out arti­fice or excess: a back­drop for the litur­gi­cal fit­tings to enhance and impart with a sacred and the­o­log­i­cal sense.
The brief required depic­tions of par­tic­u­lar devo­tions of this broth­er­hood to be includ­ed. These were con­sid­ered from the start as part of the design, instead of lat­er addi­tions. Orig­i­nal art work was exe­cut­ed in situ, on walls and join­ery sur­faces, cre­at­ing an intense and glob­al rela­tion­ship between the space and the reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty. Togeth­er, the space and the ele­ments that pop­u­late the space con­vey a clear and crit­i­cal mes­sage to its users – rein­forc­ing the sense of belong­ing and shar­ing that imbued the orig­i­nal commission.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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