Detail of the project ed. 2024

abbey-of-tilburg / Uganda

Design­er	Stu­dio FH / Localworks
Loca­tion	Eind­hovenseweg 3, 5056 RP Berkel-Enschot
Nation	Nether­lands
Design Team	Allan Semaku­la, Charles Sse­girinya, Deb­o­rah Tusi­ime, Edson Agume, Emma Mugisha, Felix Hol­land, Juliana Achi, Mar­co Ces­tarollti, Moreen Katusi­ime, Paul Asi­imwe, Philip Matovu, Philip Murun­gi, Robert Mugisha, San­dra Mudon­do, Valerie Rubombora
Year	2021
Pho­to credits	Will Boase

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The church is a long, nar­row and tall bar­rel-vault­ed vol­ume; it is a direct ref­er­ence to the archi­tec­ture of monas­tic church­es. As tra­di­tion­al as the space is, its struc­ture has been sub­tly invert­ed; instead of sol­id mason­ry columns with win­dows in-between, ‘columns of light’ seem to car­ry this church, con­nect­ed by arch­es made of strips of brick­work inter­spersed with glass bottles.
A light-weight, sec­ondary trop­i­cal roof hov­ers above the church, shad­ing and pro­tect­ing the build­ing, col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter and pro­vid­ing space for pho­to­volta­ic pan­els. The rein­forced brick­work of the church that is embed­ded with glass bot­tles makes ‘light arch­es’ that direct sun­light into the church at mid­day. Light is played with fur­ther: sun catch­ers in the east­ern wall are illu­mi­nat­ed in the morn­ings of sol­stice and equinox days and, a rose win­dow casts a cir­cu­lar spot of direct evening light into the church dur­ing the late after­noon ser­vices. The oth­er three build­ings in the monastery are mod­est court­yard blocks. Inclined plinths made of stacked clay tile strips ele­vate these build­ings above swampy wet-land sur­rounds below them. Above, there is a play between sol­id and per­fo­rat­ed brick walls, blur­ring the lines between walls and open­ings. Towards the court­yard, walk­way roofs are sup­port­ed by load-bear­ing per­fo­rat­ed brick screens of vary­ing sizes. Mate­r­i­al wise, the design makes use of bricks sus­tain­ably fired with cof­fee husks. Using brick as a pri­ma­ry mate­r­i­al fol­lows the Cis­ter­cian prin­ci­ple of ‘mate­r­i­al only’ – the brick is avail­able close to site, ages well and is easy to han­dle. Build­ing the church but­tress­es in brick by grad­u­al­ly increas­ing their thick­ness and depth towards the ground exposed the archi­tec­tur­al expres­sion of exact­ly how the loads work. All new build­ings are pas­sive­ly ven­ti­lat­ed, with cross-ven­ti­la­­tion, ven­ti­lat­ed ceil­ing voids, reflec­tive roof­ing mate­r­i­al and shad­ed win­dows. This ensures a com­fort­able indoor cli­mate through­out the year. The land­scape design forms sim­ple, con­tem­pla­tive spaces which facil­i­tates the life of med­i­ta­tion and reflec­tion led by the monks. The clois­ter gar­den is pure­ly intend­ed for obser­va­tion whilst the court­yard in front of the church responds to the idea of trans­paren­cy of the order at the same time as phys­i­cal­ly cre­at­ing a pro­tec­tive bar­ri­er from the out­side world.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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