Description

The building is situated in a quiet but built-up suburban neighbourhood. It consists of an angular wall and a rectangular box, both made of concrete constructed in situ. The angle is formed by two free standing planes placed at an angle of 75 degrees to one another. The longer of the two legs is aligned north-south, piercing the rectangular volume of the church on its westward side before exiting through the end wall to the north. Where the wall and box meet, open or glazed slots preserve the autonomy of both elements.

On arrival, one turns right and enters the “vestibule”, already within the main volume of the building. Produced by the collision between the angular wall and the box, this forecourt tapers in a narrow wedge shape. One continues on through a large 1.65 by 5.35 metre opening, a gap in the angular wall as it passes through the building and turns right again to look from the back towards the front of the main “nave”.

The dimensions of the box, 18 by 6.28 by 6.28 metres, are the equivalent of three cubes arranged behind one another. The pitch-black cedar wood floor descends in shallow tiers towards the ambo. The pews, made of rough planking, divide down the middle to leave an aisle through the centre. The rear wall behind the ambo is divided once vertically and once horizontally, leaving two thin strips of light, which together form a slot in the sign of the cross. In the mornings until midday rays of sunlight stream through the opening, illuminating a cross on the floor that shifts as the day progresses. The only other natural illumination is provided by the full-height glazed opening on the west wall.

The interior of the chapel is quite dark, acquiring a green or blue tinge from the daylight reflecting off the smooth concrete. According to the architect, this was the only way to transform light into a sign of belief. The building draws on the language of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn on the one hand, and Richard Serra and Carl Andre on the other. Its sparse, reserved character has caused critics to celebrate it as an “architecture of silence.” Together with Peter Zumthor’s Sogn Benedetg Chapel in Somvix, Switzerland, it has had a profound influence on sacred architecture since 1990.

Some ten years after its construction, the Chapel of the Light was extended to provide a Sunday school to the west of the chapel. Its form repeats the same basic formal principle with a similar angular wall and box. Today, the shape and spatial arrangement of both singularly ascetic buildings form a pair inseparable from one another.

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Originally published in: Rudolf Stegers, Sacred Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2008.