Detail of the project ed. 2016

chapel-maria-mag­­dale­­na / Sacher.Locicero.Architects

Design­er  Ger­hard Sacher
Loca­tion  Aus­tria , Carinthia, Zollfeld
Design Team  

Ger­hard Sach­er — Eric Locicero
Year  2014
Pho­to credits  

Paul Ott
Chris­t­ian Brandstätter

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Set against a dra­mat­ic back­drop of dis­tant moun­tains and bound­less sky, a tiny chapel in Austria’s south­ern­most state of Carinthia mag­ni­fies the inten­si­ty and nat­ur­al beau­ty of its loca­tion. The Maria Mag­dale­na Chapel, designed by Graz-based Ger­hard Sach­er sits in the midst of a young vine­yard on the gen­tly ris­ing plains near the foothills of the East­ern Alps. A delib­er­ate­ly sim­ple mate­r­i­al palette—glass and white self-com­­pact­ing con­crete, with cream and beige traver­tine tiles inside—allows the bucol­ic site to play an inte­gral role in how vis­i­tors expe­ri­ence the build­ing. “A town chapel has to exclude the out­side world to attain tran­quil­i­ty, so the walls have only a few open­ings,” says Sach­er. “But a chapel sit­u­at­ed in the coun­try­side can open up and ben­e­fit from the inter­play with nature.” Floor-to-ceil­ing glaz­ing on the building’s east­ern wall allows full views of the land­scape beyond a large bronze cross by Czech artist Jaromir Gar­gu­lak. On the north and south sides of the build­ing, three nar­row win­dows slice through the bright con­crete, depict­ing the cre­ation sto­ry through their col­or­ful glass pan­els by Carinthi­an artist Karl-Heinz Simonitsch. Two immense bronze doors (also by Gar­gu­lak) punc­tu­ate the clear glass of the west-fac­ing entrance, which extends up to the top of the 25-foot-high gabled roof. “If you stroll by,” says Sach­er, “you will fall for the radi­ant-white sim­ple form—even if you are the most con­vinced agnostic.”

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

BACK TO PROJECTS PAGE