the story of the chapel begins far back, at the very start of architecture school, about 25 years ago. one of the professors required every student to buy a book for the introduction to the architectural design process — architecture: form, space and order by ching. every architect should know it: very visual, filled with wonderful hand drawings by the author. yet inside it i found a passage quoting le corbusier’s towards an architecture, written almost a hundred years ago, and it truly moved me. it changed the way i looked at things and, from that moment on, everything i saw or drew searched for “walls rising toward the sky in such a way that they moved me.”

i spent many years thinking about this, always hoping to design something with that power, until one day a couple of clients — the kind every architect dreams of — asked me to revisit the idea of a small chapel. we had discussed it during the design of their country house, then under construction, but abandoned it because the site could not accommodate both buildings. they decided to build it on the adjacent lot. for me, the moment had arrived; i knew the project should be entirely based on that text.

i offered the project to them as a gift, charging nothing, and we began the conception process: gathering technical information, topography, sunlight, relationship with neighbors — in this case their own house — and a very simple brief: a small place for prayer. as references, i turned to the two professionals closest to my premise: the master of concrete tadao ando and the american sculptor richard serra, with his unique curves that define architecture through voids. i absorbed it all, placed it on a distant shelf inside my mind, rejected mechanical or automatic solutions, turned off reason, turned on feeling, and began the first sketches.

i envisioned a chapel of about 10–12 square meters, set within a 2,500 m² plot. to gently occupy such a vast space we began with the user’s path from the street: two curved lines, like ribbons of exposed concrete, serpentine across the land, changing height, inclination, thickness and radius, marking the journey — because, as in spirituality, the act of seeking matters more than the destination. they would rise from the sacred ground, traverse the open space, bend to form an enclosed area where people could remain sheltered in silence, and then rise toward the sky in such a way that it still moves me — nothing more.

all complementary elements had to be very simple: landscape, frames, light and materials.

i presented the idea to the clients; after reading the text to them i became emotional, as always happens when i share it. they loved it, granted the necessary freedom for execution, and the idea took on a life of its own. from that moment it was no longer just a drawing — it was only a matter of time before it became real. thus began the journey of transforming poetry and drawing into object, matter and space, a cycle completed only when inhabited by people.