Detail of the project ed. 2020

OCHOA – SAN BROCHERO CHAPEL

Design­er	Fed­eri­co Javier Ochoa
Loca­tion	Vil­la Cura Brochero, Cór­do­ba, Argentina
Design Team	Arq. Fed­eri­co Ochoa Arq. Ari­ane Ochoa
Year	2017
Pho­to credits	Gon­za­lo Viramonte

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Saint Father Brochero Chapel
Project Narrative
How to build a chapel in hon­our of a saint with­out falling into lit­er­al reminiscences?
This was the start­ing point and the biggest chal­lenge of design­ing a chapel for the first Argen­tine Saint. The most log­i­cal solu­tion was, “design­ing with a Brocher­ian spir­it, fol­low­ing the val­ues and the inten­tions of the priest with­out falling into mor­pho­log­i­cal repetitions”.
First of all, Father Brochero who was down to earth, hav­ing his eyes in Heav­en, was well known because of his social deeds that aimed at touch­ing hearts, souls and lives.
The Chapel emerges from earth rhom­bo-shaped. While it touch­es the sky each sec­tion under­goes a key process, and it fin­ish­es towards Heav­en. Also the “Gau­cho Priest” made use of clay, straw and wood to focus on local and con­tem­po­rary tech­niques. These ones are replaced by cur­rent and updat­ed mate­ri­als such as con­crete, steel and aluminum.
Final­ly Saint Brochero always relied on the skills of his “sheep herd”, regard­less the com­plex­i­ty of the con­struc­tion that the chapel demand­ed. Local brick­lay­ers teamed up to make this Chapel possible.
From the reli­gious point of view the sig­nif­i­cance and the sym­bol­ic have a major role in the under­stand­ing of the holy space.
This Chapel built to pay a trib­ute to the first Argen­tine Saint, an extra­or­di­nary human being, demand­ed a very par­tic­u­lar design in which the exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or of the build­ing showed off a mod­ern lan­guage capa­ble of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a mod­ern man, deeply root­ed in tradition.
The “flex­i­bil­i­ty” of rein­forced con­crete makes it the ide­al mate­r­i­al to cap­ture the mean­ing­ful mor­phol­o­gy of the Chapel. Struc­ture, func­tion and space are uni­fied by the two hyper­bol­ic parab­o­loids of 8 cen­time­tres thick. The inte­ri­or space of the Chapel also con­sists of sim­ple and mod­est mate­ri­als as today in hous­es made up of bricks, wood and stone.
The cen­tral­ized dis­tri­b­u­tion reminds us of the Last Din­ner, insti­tu­tion of the Eucharist, ori­gin of the Holy Mass, East­er din­ner where the Chris­tians gath­ered and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the feast around an ordi­nary table.
Last but not least, the per­cep­tion of light has a close con­nec­tion with the expe­ri­ence of God’s grace. God is invis­i­ble to our eyes, yet his action and grace fill up our lives. That “source” of light of the Chapel, invis­i­ble to the eye, floods every­where as the sacred space reveals itself.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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