Detail of the project ed. 2020

TSZWAI SO – BELARU­SIAN MEMO­R­I­AL CHAPEL

Design­er	Tszwai So
Loca­tion	Hold­en Avenue, N12 8HY Lon­don, UK
Design Team	Author/Architect/Designer: Tszwai So Project Archi­tect: Samuel Ben­til-Men­sah (Spher­on Architects)
Year	2017
Pho­to credits	Joakim Boren: Ex01, Ex02, Ex03, Ex04, In01, In03 Helene Binet: In02, In04 Ioana Mari­nes­cu: In05 Mikalaj Pack­a­jeu: Ex05

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The Belaru­sian Memo­r­i­al Chapel is the first wood­en church built in Lon­don since the Great Fire of 1666. Accom­mo­dat­ing up to 40 peo­ple, the diminu­tive chapel com­mis­sioned by the Holy See was built for the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty whom relo­cat­ed to the UK after WWII. They were once pre­dom­i­nant­ly Greek Catholics who were sub­se­quent­ly banned by the Tsarist Regime in the 19th Cen­tu­ry. Dur­ing WWII, Belarus lost 1/3 of her pop­u­la­tion —the largest per­cent­age of any coun­try, and count­less wood­en church­es and syn­a­gogues togeth­er with the wor­ship­pers were torched by Nazi troops. The 1st gen­er­a­tion of Belaru­sians in Britain there­fore were still haunt­ed by this mem­o­ry. The design of the new chapel recog­nis­es the impor­tance of famil­iar­i­ty, com­fort and col­lec­tive mem­o­ries with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from architect’s first-hand record­ing of church­es and tes­ti­monies from locals in rur­al Belarus, a coun­try once pop­u­lat­ed by numer­ous wood­en struc­tures. Motifs asso­ci­at­ed with col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty and mem­o­ries, such as the Baroque cupo­la reap­pears as a sign of their Greek Catholic faith; as the his­toric cupo­las were all replaced with Russ­ian Ortho­dox Onion domes in Belarus. This rein­ter­pre­ta­tion aims to tran­scend archi­tec­tur­al ide­olo­gies by mar­ry­ing a ver­nac­u­lar typol­o­gy with con­tem­po­rary detail­ing, exem­pli­fied by the undu­lat­ing exte­ri­or fins, form­ing an unob­tru­sive yet dynam­ic façade. Inside the cleresto­ry win­dows give the appear­ance that the walls are float­ing, ampli­fy­ing the spir­i­tu­al pres­ence of the build­ing yet con­trasts its struc­tur­al solid­i­ty. Nat­ur­al ven­ti­la­tion flows via the bell tow­er and the rear, while air-sourced heat­ing hid­den under­neath the altar. The exten­sive use of cer­ti­fied off-site tim­ber con­struc­tion reduces the car­bon foot­print. At night, as the chapel glows soft­ly, in prayer, the Belaru­sians are remind­ed of the trau­mat­ic torch­ing of their ances­tors inside the wood­en church­es dur­ing WWII.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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