Ecumenical Chapel

A client that visited our Estancia Chapel contacted us to design a private chapel on the plot of land they had recently bought on the backside of their weekend house in Cuernavaca, Mexico. They wanted an Ecumenical chapel, a non-religious and universal space, to meditate. They liked our Estancia Chapel but wanted something more discreet, something that would be hidden from sight from their house. Our Estancia Chapel is a wedding chapel conceived to celebrate life and our Sunset Chapel is a mausoleum in a garden of crypts conceived to mourn death. This third chapel meant for meditation represents the midpoint between these two opposites, life and death, so it is a balance point, an opportunity to journey into our deeper self. The chapel is buried underground and a spiraling ramp that surrounds it brings us inside. This ramp is flanked with a vegetated wall that functions as a vertical garden. A water pond forms the rooftop of the chapel and at its center we find an oculus, a glass covered opening in the metallic plate, that lets sunlight filter through the water, generating light and shadow patterns on the inside. The space is contained by a lattice wall formed ...