Detail of the project ed. 2020

PARA­LELA – SAN FRAN­CIS­CO CHAPEL

Design­er	Jose di Girolamo
Loca­tion	VIÑA EL CAMPESINO (NO NUM­BER), 9620000, MARIA PIN­TO, CHILE
Design Team	Jose di Giro­lamo, Raimun­do Sal­ga­do, David Meza, Trinidad Amenabar, Mar­tin Cor­rea, Jose Manuel Arteaga
Year	2019
Pho­to credits	All pho­tos by Nico­las Saieh (www.nicosaieh.cl) except for “CSF-pho­­to-EXT‑5” (PHO­TO 5 EXTER­NAL) by Jose di Girolamo

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

With­in the frame­work of the “Capil­la Pais” project, dur­ing the first weeks of the sum­mer of 2019, more than 500 uni­ver­si­ty vol­un­teers trav­eled to dif­fer­ent loca­tions in Chile to build 15 chapels to pro­vide meet­ing and prayer spaces for peo­ple in small and vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties in the coun­try, where peo­ple prac­tice their faith col­lec­tive­ly, sim­ply and hon­est­ly, far from the insti­tu­tion­al cri­sis of the church and its hier­ar­chies. The pro­posed and exe­cut­ed project is based on the fol­low­ing design principles:

Sym­bol­ic Char­ac­ter: A struc­ture clear­ly recog­nis­able as a chapel, encour­ag­ing prayer as well as the real­i­sa­tion of social activ­i­ties. Using the most ele­men­tary image of a church, based on a sym­met­ri­cal struc­ture with a gable roof.

Con­struc­tive Sim­plic­i­ty: A chapel that is built entire­ly by uni­ver­si­ty vol­un­teers, with­out dif­fi­cul­ties and with­in the avail­able time frame, based on in-situ pre­fab­ri­ca­tion process­es and simul­ta­ne­ous assembly. 

Use of Mate­ri­als: A chapel that allows an excel­lent per­for­mance of its com­po­nents, both to max­i­mize the use of eco­nom­ic resources as well as to min­imise mate­r­i­al loss and loss of time.

Indi­rect Light­ing: A chapel that takes advan­tage of sun­light to indi­rect­ly illu­mi­nate the perime­ter of the struc­ture, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of also installing arti­fi­cial light­ing, pro­vid­ing an atmos­phere of prayer.

Ver­sa­til­i­ty and Expan­sion: A chapel with a basic design that allows sim­ple vari­a­tions and enlarge­ments, depend­ing on the require­ments and capa­bil­i­ties of the communities.

Con­di­tion­ing: A chapel that allows achiev­ing bet­ter ther­mal con­di­tion­ing with sim­ple sub­se­quent inter­ven­tions that the com­mu­ni­ty can exe­cute with­in the wall thick­ness gen­er­at­ed by the structure.

A rigid gable frame is the most essen­tial unit of the chapel. The rep­e­ti­tion of this frame forms a base mod­ule deter­mined by the length of a stan­dard plate. The thick­ness of the pil­lars and com­pos­ite truss­es allow vari­a­tions in the instal­la­tion of coat­ings, gen­er­at­ing var­i­ous types of addi­tion­al mod­ules (atri­um, doors, fin­ish­ing, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties), with mul­ti­ple pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions allow­ing, on one hand, to adapt the chapel to dif­fer­ent geo­graph­i­cal con­di­tions and loca­tions, and on the oth­er hand, facil­i­tate its sub­se­quent expan­sion, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter of the proposal.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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