Final Chapel - Bruce

This is the final design I came up with. I would say the main influence in the design of the project was Tadao Ando and his projects The Benesse House, Chichu Museum, and Church if the Light.


The Main Chapel is pure concrete, which adds to a feeling of sacredness, purity, and simplicity to the chapel. Like Ando's works, I wanted to create a feeling of mass vs light, and heavy concrete with slender strips of daylighting coming into the chapel from the top really created this effect. As if light is coming from some divine space up above. The side walls also create the side roofs and focus the building to the center. The overall idea with the roofs was to have mix of simple to complex. Having pretty flat rectangular roofs along the center of the building, and have more interesting-complex roofs as one went east or west.



At the end of the chapel in the stage area, there is a beloved detail. There are three slender windows in diagonals that together make a triangle. This represents the Holy Trinity that is part of the congregation's belief. Each window represents one of the entities: The Father, The Son, and The Spirit, which together form one body in which the congregation puts its faith on. Since there is a line of trees behind the main chapel, perhaps some of the trees would be visible to the pastor or people on stage from these windows.




The office, storage, bathrooms are located to the east of the main chapel. Here the roof is derived from a Fehn-type system that allows light to enter. The ceiling would be at mid height of the vertical beams that extend over the spaces. This would allow for the beams to be seen from both inside and outside of the building. What I really like about this part of the chapel building is that it creates a space for reflection. As one steps outside of the chapel going to the office, there is this space with lines of natural light alternating with shadows from the beams. This creates a place for people to calm down, appreciate the trees to the east, and have a sense of privacy before meeting with the pastor or minister in his office.





On the other side of the door to the office is the Zen View. This is a window/door type opening. The opening is about 4 feet tall from the ground. This opening faces the ocean, so that is what it would be framing. From up close it would be hard for people to see the ocean, but from the main aisle or the other side of the main chapel, the idea is that people would be able to see the ocean. This is the only clearly open space that captures the ocean throughout the building. So what i had in mind was that people would be drawn to this window and as they got close to it, they would have to sit on the floor and then get the amazing view. For children, they would be able to walk through this opening, and perhaps that would make adults want to crawl or bend down to go through.




The lobby is at the front, closest to the suggested parking lot. This is also very Tadao Ando like, or at least i think so. There is an opening next to a 30 ft tall wall. The idea was to create this cave-like, maze-like, atmosphere where you want to go in it and see what is inside. Once inside you take a diagonal walk towards the main entrance. this was done to slow down the process of going to the main chapel, and also creates spaces for people to congregate. The solid roof allows for this dramatic opening as one heads towards the main chapel, which kind of adds to this revered and majestic feeling.



The side chapel shape was to complement the lobby shape. Together they from this triangular/mountain-like/wave-like form that converge down together at which the center is the 30 ft high main chapel. The side chapel was designed to have thin slender slit windows, which were inspired by the striations in many of Botta's designs and Alto's Finland convention center building. The spacing between the windows is each one foot more than the previous spacing going east. This was to add variation to the windows. The roof also went to a more complex form from the main chapel flat roof. The roof is a pinos type roof the hangs from the ceiling. I thought lowering the ceiling would add a cool effect as well as a lighting effect from the light coming in through the perimeter of the roof. There is also variation with the front walls of the side chapel. There is sort of additive thickness as one goes east. There is a baptistery fountain that resembles the beloved detail of the triangle that represents the Trinity.


Overall I like the progress that I've done with the chapel. I think that something i've learned from design this quarter is that it seems you're never really done, and there's always things to work on, even after a project is "done". It's not perfect, and there are things i feel i could change as i'm looking at it right now. It's been a fun project.