Detail of the project ed. 2024

vat­i­­can-chapel-for-la-bien­­nale-di-venezia-2018 / Portugal

Design­er	Eduar­do Souto de Moura
Loca­tion	Island of the San Gior­gio Mag­giore, Venice
Nation	Por­tu­gal
Design Team	Archi­tect: Eduar­do Souto de Moura Col­lab­o­ra­tor: Simão Sandim Local Col­lab­o­ra­tor: Francesco Magnani
Year	2018
Pho­to credits	All pho­to cred­its belong to: Luís Fer­reira Alves / Casa da Arqui­tec­tura Archive

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

‘No, it’s not a chapel, not a sanc­tu­ary and nei­ther a tomb. It’s sim­ply a place enclosed by four stone walls, with anoth­er stone at the cen­tre which could be the altar. The entrance is screened by a tree we want­ed to pre­serve. The walls, inside, have a ledge on which we can sit and wait… wait­ing with our feet on the ground, head in hands. “Things them­selves know when they ought to hap­pen.’’’ (1)

Eduar­do Souto de Moura

(1) David Mourão Ferreira

The Chapel designed by Eduar­do Souto Moura is not a chapel or a sanc­tu­ary, and nei­ther a tomb. It’s a place enclosed by four walls, with a stone at the cen­tre that could be the altar.
This chapel is a sim­ple struc­ture, built with large Vicen­za stone ash­lars carved and joined so that they form an elon­gat­ed and par­tial­ly cov­ered trape­zoid. The entrance is at one of the ends, right by a tree. A ledge on the inside walls offers the vis­i­tors a place to sit. The two roof slabs are placed one metre from the rear wall to let the sun­light in. Behind the stone/altar, a hor­i­zon­tal line cuts the ver­ti­cal joint of the stone wall, carv­ing out a cross.
The Holy See decid­ed to par­tic­i­pate for the first time in the Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale, with a unique pro­pos­al: ten small chapels built in the woods of San Gior­gio Mag­giore Island, all of them inspired by the emblem­at­ic chapel built in 1920 by Erik Gun­nard Asplund in Stock­holm’s Wood­land Ceme­tery. Our pro­pos­al prompts to reflect on the mean­ing of chapels in the 21st cen­tu­ry, by con­sid­er­ing it an iso­lat­ed ele­ment, free from the beliefs of spe­cif­ic reli­gions and detached from our usu­al con­cep­tions. With this aim in mind, we had total cre­ative free­dom, fol­low­ing just one premise: it had to address the two essen­tial litur­gi­cal func­tions, the read­ing of the Scrip­tures and the pro­vi­sion of an altar.
This aus­tere chapel was built with thick sol­id walls of Vicen­za stone.
Inside, a large slab placed at one end becomes an altar and a ledge along the four walls offers the vis­i­tors a place to sit.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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