Chapel and Meditation room | Studio Nicholas Burns

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Chapel and Meditation room | Studio Nicholas Burns

Information

  • Completion year: 2020
  • Gross Built up Area: 159 sqm
  • Project Location: NA
  • Country: Portugal
  • Lead Architects/Designer: Nicholas Burns, Tiago Reis
  • Photo Credits: Peter Bennetts
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Excerpt: Chapel and Meditation room is a chapel designed by Studio Nicholas Burns intends to create a series of inward-facing contemplative spaces without impacting the historical buildings of the place and the natural context. The building is designed to be quiet and disappear into the site; over time, the vegetation will shroud the built forms, growing around, over and on the building—a ruin.

Project Description

[Text as submitted by the Architects] “This knoll features several monumental boulders, spaced apart, and a good stand of trees around them, with tall trunks and dense foliage. In the midst of the knoll, was a faint clearing; and this place presented itself as a `natural, `logical’, and `inevitable’ location or locus for the Chapel. In the event, only two trees were lost, and all boulders retained. The positioning of the Chapel implied itself in the voids and the interstices, as an in-between place: architecture as a clearing within a clearing.”
– Michael Tawa

© Peter Bennetts

The project intends to create a series of inward-facing contemplative spaces without impacting the historical buildings of the place and the natural context. The building is designed to be quiet and disappear into the site; over time, the vegetation will shroud the built forms, growing around, over and on the building—a ruin.

© Peter Bennetts

The reredos is framed in the space and contrasted by the space. The restoration was authentic because repairs were left on show, and the fading and aged characters were allowed to speak and tell stories of the past. It is directly connected to religion though housed so as not to exclude other faiths.

© Peter Bennetts

The orientation of the building is designed around specific dates and times corresponding to essential events for the client’s family. The idea is that time is marked over generations at these points, forming very personal rituals. Deep shadows have the effect of drawing one into an abstract space whilst shafts of light connect to nature directly. High openings give a sense of the sky floating upwards towards the light. The singular window frames the meditation room’s water, boulder, and atmosphere. 

© Peter Bennetts

They were abstracting naturing and proving an intense view intensifying the connection. The depths of the shadows in the space dematerialise the room.

In parts, the boulders formed the formwork for the structure. The spaces in between the boulders and the trees informed the shape. The plasticity and monolithic characteristics of concrete were a natural selection. Local ardosia is used in parts with the intention that it forms part of the landscape and contrasts with the concrete form – more grounded versus light.

© Peter Bennetts

Water is an essential element of the design, part of the building fabric (the same as with the boulders and trees and topography). Symbolically it connects and cleanses – an unspoken ritual – and engages the sense connecting one to the place. The design allows the water to pause on its journey from deep underground to the river and eventually the ocean.

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