Detail of the project ed. 2020

ABALOS+SENTKIEWICZ – NEW BUND DIS­TRICT CHURCH

Design­er	Iña­ki Ába­los, Rena­ta Sentkiewicz
Loca­tion	New Bund Dis­trict, Pudong, Shang­hai, China
Design Team	Col­lab­o­ra­tors: Adri­an Úbe­da, Álvaro Maján, Alexan­der Jacob­son, Eva Castiñeira, Ale­jan­dra Sal­vador, Hao Chen, Chenchen Hu, Tere­sa Cas­bas, Yiqun Wang (Abalos+Sentkiewicz AS+) Mod­el: Yi Zhao Model
Year	2019
Pho­to credits	All pho­tos by Zhang Yong (ZYarch Photography)

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Locat­ed in the main entrance to the new New Bund inter­na­tion­al dis­trict in Pudong, Shang­hai, the project began with a con­flic­tive sit­u­a­tion between the eccle­si­as­ti­cal author­i­ties and the local gov­ern­ment, who con­tact­ed AS + to find a sat­is­fac­to­ry solu­tion. The project pre­sent­ed by the Church Admin­is­tra­tion was frag­men­tary and bizarre so it did not match the expec­ta­tions of the Pudong author­i­ties, who expect­ed the tem­ple to reflect the mod­ern and cos­mopoli­tan con­di­tion of the new devel­op­ment. Apart from these dif­fi­cul­ties, the com­plex con­di­tions of the plot, where the under­ground infra­struc­ture of the sub­way con­strains the lot against the access road to the New Bund, gives the build­ing the con­di­tion of edge between the lin­ear park of the Huang­pu Riv­er and the new urban development. 

The AS + project starts inte­grat­ing pro­gram divi­sion of the pre­vi­ous project, which divid­ed the admin­is­tra­tive func­tions of the wor­ship spaces, into a sin­gle vol­ume that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly func­tions as a gate­way to the park, an open-air meet­ing space, an urban land­mark and a priv­i­leged view­point of the surroundings. 

This project orga­ni­za­tion con­nects with the topo­graph­i­cal and land­scape under­stand­ing of the build­ing’s roof as an exten­sion of the adja­cent park, con­ceived in the man­ner of the acces­si­ble roofs of cer­tain Euro­pean cathe­drals such as Milan or Paris. Through a pic­turesque pub­lic stair­way, which turns towards the front of the tem­ple like the tail of a marine ani­mal, it ascends to the gar­den roof of the build­ing: a nat­ur­al belvedere over the park and the Huang­pu Riv­er that allows the gath­er­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty around the cel­e­bra­tion of out­door cer­e­monies, like weddings. 

The cen­tral space of the com­plex, the main chapel, empha­sizes its sym­bol­ic char­ac­ter as a meet­ing place for the com­mu­ni­ty, inte­grat­ing two types of wor­ship spaces: the lon­gi­tu­di­nal nave of a fun­da­men­tal­ly Catholic tra­di­tion and the Protes­tant audi­to­ri­um tem­ples, con­ceived around the acoustic and the cer­e­mo­ni­al role of the choir. The reli­gious pro­gram is com­plet­ed with a small­er chapel locat­ed behind the rear bleach­er that is sep­a­rat­ed from the main nave by a wood­en wall that can be removed to occa­sion­al­ly increase the capac­i­ty of the tem­ple to 2,000 people.

The set is made with a tight bud­get that forced to restrict the mate­ri­al­i­ty to the exten­sive use of the white plas­ter, link­ing the pro­pos­al with the plas­tic lines of its envi­ron­ment, and the use of the con­crete seen in the base, bell and cov­er of the main nave. This mate­r­i­al aus­ter­i­ty is bal­anced by the strate­gic use of pure­ly archi­tec­tur­al resources such as neat forms con­nect­ing the park with the zone in an ascen­dant chore­og­ra­phy, or nat­ur­al light, which fil­ters into the inte­ri­or of the tem­ple with a spe­cif­ic reli­gious inten­tion­al­i­ty accord­ing to each of the orientations.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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