apaloosa unveils open-air chapel in rural mexico
CategoriesArchitecture

apaloosa unveils open-air chapel in rural mexico

La Escondida Chapel sits in rural La Garza in Mexico

 

Designed by Apaloosa Estudio de Arquitectura y Diseño in collaboration with Walter Hugo Flores, La Escondida Chapel sits in the rural area of La Garza in Mexico. A public space amid a housing complex, the chapel seeks to spatially create a connection with its users while fostering direct spiritual connection with the divine. Its pavilion-like form crafted from steel and wood encourages visitors to become enveloped by the large-scale, open space and gaze upwards for a celestial experience. Its deliberate placement, visible yet requiring a lengthy journey towards it, creates a reference for its surroundings and imparts a sense of anticipation to approaching worshippers.

apaloosa's open-air chapel engulfs worshippers in a celestial experience in rural mexico
all images courtesy of Apaloosa Estudio de Arquitectura y Diseño

 

 

Apaloosa Estudio crafts a pavilion-like experience

 

La Escondida Chapel manifests the universal human quest for a celestial connection, exploring the interstitium — a space that channels the infusion of natural zenithal light and fosters a communion between the worshipper and the divine. Apaloosa Estudio de Arquitectura y Diseño (more here) embraces the concept of an intangible direct relationship, acknowledging the personal or collective pursuit of expression with a higher being.

 

To enhance this connection, the project introduces a silo that serves as a conductor of light, absorbing, sifting, and diffusing natural light while controlling its intensity within the interior space. The feature’s strategic height also ensures a uniform distribution of temperature, creating an atmosphere conducive to spiritual reflection.

apaloosa's open-air chapel engulfs worshippers in a celestial experience in rural mexico
sited in the rural area amid a housing complex

apaloosa's open-air chapel engulfs worshippers in a celestial experience in rural mexico
Apaloosa Estudio de Arquitectura y Diseño unveils La Escondida Chapel

apaloosa's open-air chapel engulfs worshippers in a celestial experience in rural mexico
a silo serves as a conductor of light

Reference

Ronan Bouroullec furnishes 17th-century Saint-Michel de Brasparts chapel
CategoriesInterior Design

Ronan Bouroullec furnishes 17th-century Saint-Michel de Brasparts chapel

Following the wildfires that ravaged Brittany’s Arrée mountains last summer, Ronan Bouroullec has reimagined the interior of the region’s historic Chapelle Saint-Michel de Brasparts as part of a full restoration.

Originally built at the end of the 17th century, the chapel is a modest building without lighting or electricity, perched on top of a prominent hill that rises above the surrounding moorland.

Entrance of Chappelle Saint-Michel de Brasparts
Chappelle Saint-Michel de Brasparts has undergone a full restoration

Breton businessman François Pinault, founder of luxury group Kering, financed the chapel’s restoration after it was damaged during the wildfires, patching up its metre-thick stone walls, rammed-earth floors and the exposed oak frame supporting the slate roof.

Bouroullec, who was born and raised in Brittany, remembers the chapel from his childhood and was compelled to design a new altar and several furnishings for the building as part of the refurbishment.

Working in collaboration with local artisans, he used a trinity of roughly-hewn materials – granite, steel and glass – that would stand the test of time while reflecting the building’s rugged rural location.

Brittany chapel interior by Ronan Bouroullec
Ronan Bouroullec designed a new altar for the chapel

“Heavy enough not to be moved, sturdy enough not to be damaged, rough enough not to require cleaning, the elements that Ronan Bouroullec has placed in the chapel must succeed, despite or because of these characteristics, in creating a sensory experience,” wrote Martin Bethenod, former CEO of Pinault’s Bourse de Commerce museum, in an introductory text for the project.

“The bush-hammered granite, blurred glass, hammered steel, the choice of a galvanized finish to soften the contrast of the cross and candlesticks with the whiteness of the lime-rendered walls – each intervention combines sensations of roughness and softness, of force and tremor.”

Steel cross inside Chappelle Saint-Michel de Brasparts chapel
The granite altar is topped with a simple hammered-steel cross

Nuit celtique de Huelgoat granite – quarried less than 15 kilometres away from the chapel – was cut into three pieces before being worked by local stone mason Christophe Chini to create an altarpiece, its horizontal base and a console table for candles and offerings.

Bethenod compares the dark stone, studded with shards of white, to “the starry night sky over the chapel, virtually devoid of light pollution”.

The metal elements – a simple cross and a group of three tall candle holders, all in hammered steel – were the result of another collaboration, this time between Bouroullec and Roscoff-based metalworker Mathieu Cabioch.

Some of the candles stand directly on the altar while the rest are integrated into the Brutalist console table, which consists of a long slab of granite, seemingly supported by several of the steel candle holders.

Steel candle holders inside chapel interior by Ronan Bouroullec
A mirrored glass disc is mounted centrally behind the altar

The final element in Bouroullec’s material trinity is glass, in the form of a large mirrored disc that hangs centrally behind the altar.

Made by glassmakers from the Venice area, with whom Bouroullec has worked for several years, the piece was designed to create a dialogue with the two stained-glass windows in the apse, which are the chapel’s only surviving decorative element.

“More than a mirror, more than an object, it is a light source without physical substance, as if a round hole had been made in the wall to reveal daylight, unpredictable and constantly changing,” said Bethenod.

Candle sticks inside Chappelle Saint-Michel de Brasparts chapel
Steel candleholders are also integrated into a wall-mounted console

Brittany is home to some of the world’s oldest standing architecture. Other projects making use of the region’s historic buildings include this conversion of a 17th-century barn into a printmaker’s studio.

The first new church to be built in Brittany in the 21st century was completed by Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira in 2018, featuring a sculptural composition of intersecting concrete forms.

The photography is by Claire Lavabre courtesy of Studio Bouroullec.



Reference