Detail of the project ed. 2020

MESSI­NA | RIVAS – INGA MIR­IM CHAPEL

Design­er	Rodri­go Quin­tel­la Messina
Loca­tion	City Itu­pe­va — São Paulo — São Paulo
Design Team	fran­cis­co rivas rodri­go messina guadalupe sap­pia ​
Year	2018
Pho­to credits	All pho­tos from Fed­eri­co Cairoli

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The Ingá-Mir­im Chapel is locat­ed on the out­skirts of the city of Itu­pe­va, 80km from São Paulo, on a 19th-cen­­tu­ry estate. We were asked to ren­o­vate the for­mer local colo­nial estate to make it an envi­ron­ment that responds to local cel­e­bra­tions of reli­gious importance.

We under­stand the idea of the archi­tec­tur­al reform as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rein­ter­pret pre-exist­ing con­struc­tion, enabling new rela­tion­ships between the project and the land­scape. There­fore, as an act of reflec­tion, we decid­ed to dis­arm the mate­ri­als of the old colo­nial estate in the design of the Ingá-Mir­im Chapel in order to reuse them and to give them new conditions.

The con­struc­tion was car­ried out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the farm care­tak­ers, the broth­ers Car­los and Charles, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked in con­struc­tion and now do the local preser­va­tion work. With them we exper­i­ment­ed with how we could, through their own knowl­edge, reuse the mate­ri­als of the old local build­ings. Under these con­di­tions, the con­struc­tion process fol­lowed the sched­ule of the dai­ly activ­i­ties such as mow­ing, releas­ing hors­es or feed­ing cattle.

Using the foun­da­tion of the pre-exist­ing con­struc­tion, the project is based on three stone walls used in the old road that allowed access to the farm. Between these three walls, the unarmed bricks of the estate define a path that leads through spaces that seek con­ti­nu­ity between con­struc­tion and land­scape, thus sug­gest­ing an open reli­gious enjoyment.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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