Detail of the project ed. 2024

chapel-and-med­i­­ta­­tion-room / Indonesia

Design­er	Nicholas Burns
Loca­tion	Guimarães, Por­tu­gal
Nation	Por­tu­gal
Design Team	Nicholas Burns Tia­go Reis
Year	2021
Pho­to credits	pho­tos © Peter Bennetts

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Set with­in 35 hectares of gar­dens and vine­yards in a for­est south­east of the town, the ini­tial idea was for a build­ing to serve as a med­i­ta­tion room for indi­vid­ual prayer and reflec­tion and worship.
The require­ment to house a rare 18th-cen­­tu­ry carved tim­ber and gild­ed rere­dos changed the brief and led to the design of a two-part ensem­ble: a sin­u­ous chapel of in situ con­crete and a med­i­ta­tion room made of stacked stone, both set on a knoll amidst gran­ite boul­ders and dense forest.
The chapel, shoe­horned between the boul­ders with its cast-con­crete sur­faces curv­ing and ris­ing mon­u­men­tal­ly to the height of the for­est canopy out­side, is designed with the inten­tion that, in time, it will be absorbed into the landscape.
In a rare priv­i­lege Burns was giv­en free rein to locate the chapel any­where on the site. The result is an assem­blage of sculp­tur­al vol­umes in a com­po­si­tion of mon­u­men­tal, curv­ing sur­faces and high­ly con­trolled light­ing con­di­tions, cast­ing dap­pled pat­terns as the sun is fil­tered through the canopy. Enclo­sure and prospect and the sounds of water flow are the hall­marks of this work.
Entry to the chapel is marked by a pro­trud­ing weath­­ered-steel box that echoes to the sounds of vis­i­tors’ foot­steps. Raised slight­ly above the ground, the steel box leads into a lumi­nous ver­ti­cal vol­ume with a bap­tismal font. Shal­low lime­stone stairs lined with stone can­dle­hold­ers lead to the altar­piece, soft­ly lit by slim win­dows and candlelight.
The med­i­ta­tion room is reached across a court­yard and a series of reflec­tive water pools. Con­struct­ed of stacked shale, in con­trast to the con­crete sur­faces of the chapel this room was made delib­er­ate­ly rough, more like a land­scape wall than a building.
The only glaz­ing through­out both build­ings are tall and nar­row, posi­tioned so as to allow ear­ly morn­ing and late after­noon sun to enter, while fram­ing spe­cif­ic views of the build­ing’s nat­ur­al sur­round­ings. Both build­ings are fur­nished with min­i­mal­ist fur­ni­ture pieces designed by Burn­s’s studio.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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