Detail of the project ed. 2020

SAMUEL NETOC­NY – CHAPEL-OF-RESURRECTION

Design­er	Samuel Netoc­ny
Loca­tion	Hill over Poprad, 058 01 Poprad, Slo­va­kia, 49°0’48.007“N, 20°16’19.865“E
Design Team	Archi­tect: MArch. Samuel Netocny Sculp­tur: Akad. Soch. Otto Korkos
Year	2018
Pho­to credits

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The Chapel of Res­ur­rec­tion is a for­mu­la­tion of answers of a con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture to the eter­nal ques­tions of god and faith. Since we arrived to the time, where only sim­ple emo­tions and the ephemer­al moment mat­ter, the chapel invites us to stay longer. The only con­nec­tion to the beau­ti­ful nature out­side is light, sound and wind.

The con­cept of the chapel is based on a metaphor of the finite world and an end­less divine space linked togeth­er only by light. Every­body can decide to fol­low it or not. The archi­tec­tur­al mate­ri­al­i­sa­tion result­ed in small inti­mate space divid­ed from nature by mas­sive wood­en walls with­out win­dows. A win­dow is a clear state­ment where the light comes from. We posi­tioned more than 100 wood­en columns. They are dense enough to cre­ate an inti­mate space for prayer and med­i­ta­tion, but the pre­cise sun light pen­e­trates the sol­id wall and starts the vivid play of light and shade. Every minute the light qual­i­ty changes. Some­times there are rays only in the cor­ri­dor. Five min­utes lat­er there is a pat­tern of wide and nar­row shad­ows on the floor. The visitor’s curios­i­ty forces him to stay longer.

To root the chapel to the site, we decid­ed to use the wood of the same for­est on the hill. Select­ed larch­es were trans­port­ed only 20 km to pro­duce the wood­en beams and columns. The advanced BIM plan­ning allowed the pre­cise CNC fab­ri­ca­tion. Four weeks lat­er the trees came back to the site in form of the chapel.
Wood is a pass­ing mate­r­i­al. Because of that the con­crete fun­da­ments are cre­at­ing a cul­tur­al trace in the land­scape. The next gen­er­a­tion can build a new church on the old fun­da­ments and the orig­i­nal chapel will be still incarnated.
The wood­en part lev­i­tates 20 cm over the land­scape. It con­sists of 3 ele­ments weaved into one piece. In order to strength­en it, floor and roof beams are not par­al­lel in the top view, but they are cross­ing. Every col­umn has a dif­fer­ent height. The com­bi­na­tion of dif­fer­ent col­umn lengths con­nect­ed with one roof beam makes the con­struc­tion strong against wind. There­fore no oth­er rein­force­ment is needed.
The light roof is trans­form­ing the big sculp­ture into a small piece of archi­tec­ture. Next to the wood are the trans­par­ent glass fibre­boards, the most used mate­r­i­al in tra­di­tion­al Slo­vak vil­lages. The fine wave mol­li­fies the strict geom­e­try of the wood­en part.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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