Detail of the project ed. 2024

parish-church-senor-de-la-mis­­er­i­­cor­­dia / Spain

Design­er	Belén Mon­eo + Jeff Brock
Loca­tion	Pueblo Ser­e­na, Carr Nacional #500, Sin Nom­bre de Col 50, 67350 Mon­ter­rey, N.L., Mexico
Nation	Mex­i­co
Design Team	ARCHI­TECTS Belén Mon­eo, Jef­frey Brock ARCHI­TECTS TEAM Irene Alber­di, Andrés Bar­rón, Fab­rice Leray
Year	2016
Pho­to credits	All Jorge Taboa­da except: — IGL_EXT_2: Belén Moneo — IGL_INT_5: Belén Moneo

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The church is locat­ed in a new urban devel­op­ment. Its main entry opens direct­ly onto a plaza, and this 11.5‑meter-wide open­ing allows for a visu­al and mate­r­i­al con­nec­tion between the church inte­ri­or and the plaza. This allows the plaza to func­tion as an annex to the church, with cel­e­bra­tions and rites spilling out­doors when crowds exceed the church’s capac­i­ty of 350. Above the entry canopy, the façade is a large flat wall, an emphat­ic and square plane, declar­a­tive of the oth­er­ness of the space with­in: the sacred space of the church interior. 

With this project the spaces of the tem­ple not only allow for teach­ings, social activ­i­ties, rites and cel­e­bra­tions, but also rep­re­sent the devel­op­ment of an archi­tec­tur­al lan­guage with a long his­to­ry, speak­ing of con­ti­nu­ity but also renewal. 

The vol­u­met­ric con­cept of the church derives from tra­di­tion­al church plans, and the design presents rec­og­niz­able archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures tak­en from ear­ly Chris­t­ian tem­ple pro­to­types, such as the bell tow­er, the stained-glass win­dows, the frontal altar, the bap­tis­tery, the choir, the three chapels and the lat­er­al court­yard. Nonethe­less, the design is undoubt­ed­ly modern. 

The plan is that of a basil­i­ca, with a rec­tan­gu­lar cen­tral nave some 15 meters high, its long axis ori­ent­ed towards the altar. There are mul­ti­ple sources of nat­ur­al light in the inte­ri­or. Behind the bap­tis­tery a long glass wall runs the length of the nave giv­ing views of an enclosed patio. Above this area is a ver­sion of a rose win­dow, a nine-square grid open­ing to the west with col­ored glass. To the south­east, three small chapels are each daylit by high sky­lights. Final­ly, above the altar is a fourth high sky­light, whose light wash­es down behind an inclined pan­el cut into four sec­tions to reveal a large Latin cross, the cross glow­ing with the light from above.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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