Portuguese studio Web site Certain Arquitectura has transformed a warehouse at a Lisbon monastery into a minimalist chapel featuring simple furnishings and a lime-green confession booth (+ slideshow).
Architects Patrícia Marques and Paulo Costa wanted to create a place of worship “without having artifice or excess” for the brothers of the monastery in Apelação – a parish on the outskirts of the city.
The old warehouse was stripped back to its concrete shell and given a pared-back aesthetic by means of “austere and rigorous designing,” in accordance to Marques and Costa.
“This is a chapel, or a little church, built in a particular property for specific people – the brotherhood of Instituto Missionário Pio Sociedade de São Paulo,” they explained.
“The chapel operates as the heart of the Institute, both physically and symbolically it gives the hyperlink between members of the brotherhood and reaches the wider lay neighborhood via their publishing and missionary routines,” they extra.
Named Capela Jesus Mestre, the chapel occupies a central place in the complicated, between a pair of four-storey blocks where the brothers live and function.
Relevant story: La Ascensión del Señor by AGi architects seems more like a factory than a church
Simple timber volumes with cross motifs are dotted by means of the vibrant white interior. A lower-level altar and plain lectern have been chosen rather of an elevated pulpit to generate a space without hierarchies.
Some of the wooden components, which includes the altar and the confession booth, are decorated with religious illustrations by artist Bartolomeu de Gusmão. The altar also features subtle cross-shaped joints.
A slender golden crucifix stands to the rear of the lectern towards a massive window. It can be disengaged from its concrete stand and carried during celebratory processions.
A related cross functions in a chapel made for staff at a tequila factory in Mexico.
“The cross is created as an integral element of the celebrations and the building,” mentioned the architects.
The altar sits in the centre of the rectilinear room, that means the brothers can cluster close to its edge for the duration of intimate meetings. For bigger celebrations, pews can be arranged around its edges.
Lime green upholstery within the confession booth contrasts the neutral-toned area. A cross is stitched into the back wall of the secluded seating region.
A gap in the booth wall overlooks a shallow pool of water in the garden, which is made as an outdoor prayer space.
Connected story: Estudio ALA completes terracotta chapel at a Mexican tequila factory
The backyard is open to the public and can be accessed via a timber door in the grey perimeter wall. It is engraved with a cross and stands in between a bell and colourful flowering plants.
Photography is by Eduardo Nascimento and João Fôja.
Project credits:
Architecture: Web site Particular Arquitectura
Art: Bartolomeu de Gusmão
Advisor: Paulo Pires de Vale / Nuno Gusmão
Consumer: Instituto Missionário Pio Sociedade de São Paulo
Construction: Fuste – Construções e Imobiliário
Site plan – click for greater picture 
Sections – click for larger picture 
Elevation – click for larger image 
