Detail of the project ed. 2020

BERNAR­DO RODRIGUES – CHAPEL OF ETER­NAL LIGHT

Design­er	Bernar­do Rodrigues
Loca­tion	Rua Padre Gregório de Ama­r­al / rua da Saudade, fregue­sia de Pon­ta Garça, con­cel­ho de Vila Fran­ca do Campo
Design Team	author­ship: Bernar­do Rodrigues with Lau­ra von Dellemann First phase colab­o­ra­tors: James Grainger, Pedro Mosca, Nat­acha Viveiros, Nuno Mal­heiro, Nuno Rodrigues. Quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or & spec­i­fi­ca­tions: Ana For­tu­na, Car­los Tavares Build­ing: with Francesco Ugolot­ti — project manager. Colab­o­ra­tor: Gia­co­ma di Vieste
Year	2018
Pho­to credits	1 ext — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 2 ext — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 3 ext — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 4 ext — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 5 ext — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 1 int — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 2 int — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 3 int — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 4 int — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan , 5 int — Capela Luz Eter­na BR — pho­to © Iwan Baan

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The Chapel of Eter­nal Light is a funer­ary chapel for Pon­ta Garça, a small agrar­i­an Vil­lage south of St. Michel Island in Azores, Portugal.
Vil­lages are main­ly long roads par­al­lel to the sea, with hous­es fac­ing the fields upwards, backs to the ocean, tra­di­tion­al­ly where dan­gers came, rough weath­er, pirates.
Pon­ta Garça is one of a few on a high­er plat­form, not sea level.

Con­forms a cor­ner­stone in new devel­op­ment over the vil­lage in an upper-part of hous­ing and cemetery.
As the incli­na­tion is steep, the strat­e­gy was to place the build­ing with the floor lev­elled at the ceme­tery square, avoid­ing major land­fill and a dis­rup­tion of the land­scape pro­file, cre­at­ing two plat­forms. The low­er with a big water pond is where the chapel emerges and anchors, delicately.

The con­struc­tion reflects this grow­ing tec­ton­ic lay­ers. A first con­crete invert­ed pyra­mid solid­ly anchored in a foun­da­tion­al foot that sets the base for the reflect­ing pool. A sec­ond invert­ed pyra­mid in met­al beams that are bolt­ed to the con­crete one is the struc­ture and sup­port of the green Guatemala mar­ble slates on the out­side and the sil­ver paint­ed insu­lat­ed pan­els inside. 
The stone fix­a­tions and sup­port are also vis­i­ble, as remem­brance, points of sup­port neat­ly arranged in order to be a geom­e­try of grav­i­ty and light.

The inte­ri­or of the chapel evo­ques the uter­ine feel­ing of chiaro-scuro, fil­tered lay­ers between our mind and out­er world. 
An enclosed space for rec­ol­lec­tion, homage,under the design of light.
A tem­po­ral line marks on the floor from mid morn­ing to ear­ly after­noon the pas­sage of time.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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