Hasta La Ideas

A rescued stone colonnade stands amongst planes of concrete at this religious shrine in the Spanish countryside by Pamplona studio Otxotorena Arquitectos (+ slideshow).

Located outside the small village of Alberite, the Shrine of the Virgin of La Antigua stands alone on a hillside, offering wide-stretching views out across the nearby ravine.

Otxotorena Arquitectos designed the structure to accommodate both large parties and individual worship, as the shrine is only likely to attract groups of visitors at certain points on the religious calendar.

A tapered concrete canopy oversails the historic colonnade, which was rescued from near demolition by members of the local community. Concrete supports stand at either end to hold it firmly in place.

“The building volume is conceived considering the idea of framing the archway by building a parallel roof and floor to wrap and protect it,” explain the architects.

A secluded chapel is sheltered beneath the roof at the rear of the structure. Behind this, an irregular framework of concrete louvres shades a length of clerestory glazing and overhangs the end of the building to create a small belfry.

Other examples of isolated religious spaces include a stark concrete church on the side of a Chinese mountain and a see-through church in the countryside in Belgium. See more places of worship on Dezeen.

Photography is by Pedro Pegenaute.

Here’s some more information from Otxotorena Arquitectos:

Shrine of the Virgin of “La Antigua” in Alberite, La Rioja

The site corresponds to a plot on the outskirts of the town of Alberite. This is a 2.000 people village, very close to Logroño in La Rioja, Spain. The place is located on a gentle hill, overlooking a ravine opened into the road running through it. This was a plot of land given to the Parish by the Town Council for the construction of the shrine of the Virgin.

Above: context plan – click for larger image

First of all, the project aims to fulfill all the program requirements, concerning the nature and typical use given to this type of buildings, which, in its immediate environment, serve both for private devotional practices as well as for popular traditional temple fairs. This is a key ingredient in the way of considering the design, since we are obliged to expect a large influx of people within isolated intervals.

Above: location plan – click for larger image

On the other hand, the design also takes into consideration the characteristics of the place in terms of geometric, orientation and topographical measurements. It is also characterized by the appeal and width of its views.

Above: floor plan – click for larger image

Finally, there is added an absolutely fundamental premise: the need to incorporate a preexisting stone archway in the design. This archway was rescued from a previous demolition in the town and it was preserved by the locals. This way, it is intended to re-use the archway and to put more value on it. It was obviously called to assume a main role in the shape and perception of the building from the beginning.

Above: sections – click for larger image

When applying this set of arguments, however, we can remark some of the closely related choices chained to outline the design process:

a) The basic choice of the creation of a relatively wide outdoor space, which provides the interior of the shrine with some anteroom, protects the visitors from sun and rain and frames the view.
b) The attention given to the impact the building will cause in the landscape, even noticeable at long distances, that consists on a horizontal gesture correlative to the extent of the slope overlooking the ravine it faces.
c) The care given to the relationship between the few spaces created, both external and internal, as well as the hierarchical location of the entrances to the site and confined spaces of the chapel.

Above: sections – click for larger image

The building volume is conceived, in any case, considering the idea of framing the archway by building a parallel roof and floor to wrap and protect it.

Above: elevations – click for larger image

For its construction we are to use a single material, concrete, for immediacy and simplicity reasons, considering its suitable conditions of abstraction, continuity, stability and robustness.

Above: elevations – click for larger image

The post Shrine of the Virgin of La Antigua
by Otxotorena Arquitectos appeared first on Dezeen.

German architects Kister Scheithauer Gross used Jewish symbol the Star of David to create patterned windows in the limestone walls of this synagogue in Ulm, Germany.

The town’s original synagogue was torn down in 1938 as part of the Kristallnacht, or “night of broken glass”, a series of attacks on Jewish community buildings within Nazi Germany.

Kister Scheithauer Gross (KSG) won a competition in 2010 to reinstate the building beside the site where its predecessor once stood.

“This position is historical,” said architect Susanne Gross. “In the Kristallnacht in 1938, the former synagogue was destroyed. After World War II, a secular building was constructed in the space. The synagogue and the Jewish community lost its ancestral place in the centre of Ulm.”

“The construction of the current synagogue has opened a new site, in the middle of the square,” she added. “It is as though the synagogue has taken a step forward from its former position; it has reclaimed its location.”

Both a synagogue and a Jewish community centre are contained within the cube, which stands apart from other buildings and faces out onto the town square. “With no constructed borders, it stands abrupt and solitary on the Weinhof,” said Gross.

The stone walls make reference to the traditional Jerusalem limestone of many buildings in Israel, but the architects had to source a more frost-resistant stone to suit the colder climate. “We searched for a limestone with a similar but frost-resistant appearance and found the Dietfurt limestone that is mined in Bavarian Dietfurt, about 110 kilometres away from Ulm,” said KSG’s Farina Kast.

Most rooms inside the building are laid out on an orthogonal grid. However the 125-seat prayer rooms points south-east towards Jerusalem – a typical feature in synagogue design.

“In the competition design, the prayer room was faced eastward. After we won and when the close collaboration with the client began, the Rabbi expressed the wish to have the prayer room aligned towards Jerusalem,” said Kast.

The sacral chamber is positioned at the end of this space, behind the star-shaped windows.

Above: site plan

Other Jewish community buildings we’ve featured include a ritual bathhouse in Mexico and a community centre in Mainz, Germany.

Above: historical site plan

Photography is by Christian Richters.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

ksg Completes Ulm Synagogue

kister scheithauer gross architects and urban planners (ksg) have completed the community centre and synagogue for the Jewish community of Ulm.

In 2009, the Israelite Religious Community in Württemberg (IRGW) decided to build a new synagogue for its orthodox community in Ulm and, together with the city of Ulm, initiated a competition. The city placed the building site in the middle of the Weinhof, just a stone’s throw from the former synagogue, which was destroyed during Kristallnacht.

“The team from Cologne succeeded in enriching this highly sensitive location in the city of Ulm, without detracting from its unique character,” said the city’s head of construction, Alexander Wetzig, following the jury’s decision in January 2010.

In the completed build, the cuboid is lower and shorter than initially planned during the competition. It is now 24 meters wide, 16 deep and at 17 meters high, much lower than the nearby Schwörhaus.

All the spaces of the community centre and the synagogue are joined in the smooth structure: foyer, synagogue, Mikvah (ritual bath), meeting hall, school and administrative rooms as well as the child day care centre with an enclosed outdoor playing area, which is directly above the sacral room.

The rooms are arranged orthogonally. Only the synagogue follows the line of the only, free-standing support in the building, in a diagonal direction. The direction facing south-east has an overlying religious meaning behind it: its geographical direction is directly towards Jerusalem, the spiritual and religious centre of Judaism.

The diagonal room layout creates a corner window in the sacral room, which plays with a pattern of the Star of David as a space framework. With 600 openings, the synagogue is illuminated from many points, with the focal point being the liturgical centrepiece; the Torah shrine. The perforations in the façade created with a high-pressure water jet, illuminate the shrine inside and project the idea of the synagogue outwards.

The interior fittings of the synagogue are partially based on ksg plans, such as the dodecagon holder, a symbol for the twelve lines of the people of Israel. Rabbi Shneur Trebnik, together with the IRGW representatives, selected the seating and ordered the construction of the Torah shrine, including the bimah, a raised platform with a lectern, from which the Torah is dictated. All three elements were constructed in Israel.

The prayer room offers space for 125 people, including 40 spaces in the women’s gallery. The building was full to capacity during the opening on Sunday, December 2nd 2012. The 300 invited guests included former Jewish citizens of Ulm, who fled during World War II. Speeches were held by Federal President of Germany Joachim Gauck, Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg Winfried Kretschmann, the President of Central Council of Jews in Germany Dieter Graumann and Israel’s ambassador to Germany Yacov Hadas-Handelsman.

Client: Israelite Religious Community of Württemberg statutory corporation Hospitalstraße 36, 70174 Stuttgart, Germany
Board of directors: Barbara Traub, Susanne Jakubowski, Michael Kashi
Occupant: Rabbi Shneur Trebnik and the orthodox Jewish community of Ulm
Authorities: City of Ulm, Germany
Mayor: Ivo Gönner
Head of construction: Alexander Wetzig
Architects: kister scheithauer gross architects and urban planners, Cologne
Design/responsible partner: Prof. Susanne Gross
Project manager, artistic director: Grzegorz Rybacki
Team: Fritz Keuten, Matthes Langhinrichs, Stefan Schwarz, Paul Youk
Project management: nps Bauprojektmanagement GmbH, Ulm, Germany
General contractor: Matthäus Schmid Bauunternehmen GmbH & Co. KG, Baltringen, Germany

Consultants in the competition and design phase
Structural analysis: Dr.-Ing. W.Naumann & Partner, Köln
Thermo gravimetric analysis: ZWP AG, Köln
Acoustics: ISRW Dr.-Ing. Klapdor GmbH, Düsseldorf
Building physics: Ing.-Büro für Bauphysik Heinrichs, Köln
Fire safety: BFT Cognos, Aachen

Competition: 11/2009
Performance time: 2010-2012
Start of construction: 03/2011
Completion: 12/2012
Gross floor space: 1.980 m²
Performance phases: 1 – 4 plus artistic direction and master details
Construction costs: 4.6 million euros

The post Ulm Synagogue by
Kister Scheithauer Gross appeared first on Dezeen.

Dozens of square windows puncture the corrugated steel shell of this barn-like Buddhist meditation centre in a rural part of the Netherlands by Dutch architects Bureau SLA (+ slideshow).

The Buddhist organisation Metta Vihara asked the architects to create as much space as possible within the modest budget.

“What we wanted was an aesthetic that was beautiful but not too comfortable,” architect Peter van Assche told Dezeen. “The reason people go to the meditation centre is not to feel cosy – they want to go deeper, to sense something that is not too obvious. The feeling of the building should express this.”

The resulting building provides beds for 26 people in 13 bedrooms as well as a meditation hall, library and dining hall.

A mansard roof was chosen as a cost-effective way of providing extra living space while also borrowing from the vernacular architecture of Zeeland, which is near the Belgian border.

Three colours of corrugated steel have been used for the facades and roof, with red cedar beams marking the top and bottom edges of each steel sheet.

The square Velux windows have been fitted inside white wooden frames to disguise ugly joints with the steel.

The end walls are clad in wood salvaged from scaffolding left over by the builders.

At one end of the building is a large meditation room with glazed walls and corrugated steel shutters, which open out onto a view of the rural landscape.

Inside, bare limestone has been used for the load-bearing walls while the other walls are made from environmentally certified MDF.

Polished concrete has been used on all the floors with the exception of the meditation hall, which is covered with black bamboo.

The architects added: “The building has been warmly received by local residents, as evident in a conversation we heard between two passing cyclists: ‘This new cowshed looks really good, but why does it have so many windows?’”

We’ve featured two other Buddhist buildings on Dezeen – a house for a priest along the Shikoku pilgrimage route in Japan and a priest’s quarters in the Japanese Alps.

Site plan – click above for larger image

We previously published Bureau SLA’s National Glass Museum Holland in Leerdam, which saw two houses connected by four overlapping bridges wrapped in aluminium mesh.

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

See all our stories from the Netherlands »
See all our stories about Bureau SLA »
See all our stories about places of worship »

First floor plan – click above for larger image

Photographs are by Jeroen Musch.

Here’s some further information from the architects:

The Buddhist Meditation Centre Metta Vihara is located in Hengstdijk – a small village near the Belgian border – in a remote area of the Netherlands. The inhabitants of Metta Vihara (defined as ‘community of loving kindness’ in the Pali language) are members of the Triratna Community, a Buddhist movement not aligned to one traditional school, but one that draws on the whole stream of Buddhist inspiration.

Long section – click above for larger image

The new accommodation provides 26 beds in 13 one- and two-person bedrooms, a meditation hall, library and dining hall. Form and materials used in the centre relate to the rural vernacular building, but used in a new and fresh way.

As the centre is financed mainly by gifts from community members and friends, one of the design briefs was to maximise the the space while minimising the cost. Our overall design concept was to design a building that, while beautiful, wasn’t overly comforting. This is in line with the philosophy that, while on retreat, one should feel relaxed but not necessarily ‘at home’. As a result, Metta Vihara has strong aesthetics that feature robust and raw materials.

Long section – click above for larger image

The overall form of the meditation centre is an interpretation of the so-called Mansard roof, also known as the French roof. Used throughout the area (mainly because of its low cost), the Mansard roof is found widely on houses and barns. The facade of the centre – along with the cladding of the roof – is made of corrugated steel, a material popular for its low cost, strength, and long life. Typically, the drawback of using corrugated steel is in the ungraceful way it joins with other materials, specifically at the corners and in the overlays. At Metta Vihara, however, it has been used ‘as is’: no joints and no connections. Western red cedar beams and white wood window frames mark the transitions from one steel sheet to the next, with the horizontal lines of the beams giving the building depth and profile. Three different colors of steel are used, and in three different wavelengths. Indeed at first sight, it is not at all clear what the scale of the building is: does it have five floors? Three? Two?

Cross section A

The same approach of using raw materials in this new way is also used in the design of the windows. The windows in the steel skin – in facade and roof – are standard Velux windows, which are technically superb and relatively inexpensive. As with the corrugated steel, however, there is often an aesthetic compromise in the joints with other materials. In the case of Metta Vihara, though, they are framed with white painted wood, giving them a distinctive look.

Cross section B

As a contrast to the more industrial looks of the steel, the short sides of the building and the terrace walls are cladded with wood, a robust but also warm material. For this, wood already available on site was used: the leftovers of the scaffolding wood used by the builders. The structure’s interior consists of unfinished building materials, albeit used in a considerate – even delicate – way.

Structural walls are bare unplastered lime stone. Floors are raw concrete, polished and uncovered, with the exception of the meditation hall, which features black bamboo flooring. Non-loadbearing walls are made of ecologically manufactured MDF sheets and are coated with transparent colours, in order that the structure of the material remains visible.

Cross section C

In the meditation hall, doors open to the outside, allowing open air meditation. When closed, these doors – made of perforated corrugated steel – serve to filter the sunlight. This gives the space an intimate atmosphere, providing optimal conditions for meditation. The building has been warmly received by local residents, as evident in a conversation we heard between two passing cyclists: “This new cowshed looks really good, but why does it have so many windows?” The Metta Vihara building is the first newly built meditation centre in the Netherlands.

Cross section D

Project: Buddhist Meditation Centre Metta Vihara
Start design: 2009
Start building: 9/2011
Opening: 6/2012
Gross Area: 465 m2
Building costs: ca. €650,000 ex. VAT
Design: bureau SLA
Client: Metta Vihara
Address: Hengstdijkse Kerkstraat 36, Hengstdijk, The Netherlands
Program: 13 bedrooms, meditation hall, library and dining hall
Contractor: Van Kerckhoven Bouw, Kloosterzande
Structural Engineer: Sineth Engineering, Schiphol
Sustainability: Sunraytec, Woerden
Project team: Peter van Assche, Hiske van der Meer, Gonçalo Moreira, Charlotte Vermaning, Justyna Osiecka

The post Buddhist Meditation Centre Metta Vihara
by Bureau SLA appeared first on Dezeen.

This cross-shaped chapel in Brazil was designed by architect Gustavo Penna (+ slideshow).

Unlike a cruciform, the concrete cross on the front and rear facades of All Saints Chapel is wider than it is tall.

Sunlight seeps into the chapel though a skylight that runs along the uppermost point of the cross.

Clear glazing surrounds the sides of the building, while the interior is lined with timber.

A pool of water is positioned just in front and aligns with the centre of the cross.

See more chapels on Dezeen here, including one with skeletons in its basement.

Photography is by Leonardo Finotii.

Here’s some more information from Gustavo Penna:

All Saints Chapel

First, the baptismal font.

A source of pure water – the origin of everything.

Through the two river banks, one reaches the third – religare; the symbol/synthesis, the cross

Sky and earth – the vertical line

All men – the horizontal line

The internal space is created by displacing the sacred form.

The space is the movement.

The wood shelters, cuddles, protects.

Nature is around participating in solidarity.

Project name: All Saints Chapel
Architecture: Gustavo Penna, Laura Penna, Norberto Bambozzi, Alice Flores, Alyne Ferreira, Catarina Hermanny, Natália Ponciano, Priscila Dias de Araújo, Vivian Hunnicutt
Management and Planning: Isabela Tolentino e Rísia Botrel
Location: Martinho Campos – Minas Gerais – Brazil
Year designed: 2010
Year completed: 2010
Projected area: 160m²

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by Gustavo Penna appeared first on Dezeen.

Slideshow: the concrete walls of this church in Tenerife are roughly lined with crushed volcanic rocks.

Completed in 2008 by Spanish architect Fernando Menis of Menis Arquitectos, the church comprises four chunky concrete volumes separated from one another by sliced openings.

Two overlapping cracks in the building’s end wall create a large cross-shaped window that is visible from within the nave.

Gabion walls inside the building also create partitions between rooms.

This is the second concrete church we’ve featured in recent months – see our earlier story about one on the side of a mountain in China.

Photography is by Simona Rota.

Here’s some more text from Menis Arquitectos:

Church in La Laguna

This is a project located in the city of La Laguna on the Island of Tenerife. It is a place that encourages reflection, a meditation space, an intrinsic space where a person of any condition can go to find himself in the temple or join with others in the cultural center.

The building exists as a large piece of concrete split and cut into four large volumes, at these separations movement occurs. This space creates light, allowing to enter and penetrating into the space, they exist as if to signify a higher meaning inspiring a spiritual presence and sense of tranquility.

The building stands stark, stripped of superfluous elements that involve distractions far from its spiritual essence. The void has been sculpted to the same extent. The balance of proportions of void and building was vital to developing the identity of the project.

We chose to exploit the properties of concrete, based on its isotropic nature energy efficiency is optimized by the thermal inertia of the walls. The building also gets a better acoustics result; thanks to a combination of concrete and local volcanic stones called picón, which is chopped afterwards and acts as a rough finish that has a degree of sound absorption that is superior to conventional concrete.

Exterior, interior, structure, form, material and texture are joined inextricably by a complex study of the concrete.

The volumetric impact of the building and its use of essential materials, treating concrete as if it were liquid stone capturing waterfalls of light, create the temple while also optimizing economic resources. The space reflects timeless emotion.

Location: Los Majuelos, San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
Use: Social Center and Church.
Site Area: 550 m2
Total Constructed Area: 1.050 m2
Cost: 600.000 €
Structure: Reinforced concrete
Materials: Reinforced concrete, local stone, golden sheet.
Status: completed Social Center (2005-2008); under construction Church (2005-..)
Client: Holy Redeemer Parish.
Architect: Fernando Menis
Office: Menis Arquitectos
Project Team: Juan Bercedo, Maria Berga, Sergio Bruns (2005-2010), Roberto Delgado, Niels Heinrich, Andreas Weihnacht
Support Staff: Andrés Pedreño, Rafael Hernández (quantity surveyors), Pedro Cerdá (acoustics), Ojellón Ingenieros, Milian Associats, Nueva Terrain SL (services)
Construction: Construcciones Carolina
Cliente: Obispado de Tenerife