What a new church should be?
A physically small space, but huge spiritually.
A contemporary new building, but with a strong historical legacy.
A strong space but sensitive.
A solid and robust construction, with subtle natural light.
An introspective space, which invites to reflection and spirituality, but also an extroverted space, which invites to enter and gathers people.
A building with strong individual identity, but also a building that contributes to the collective identity on that specific place and environment.
FIRST PRIZE to build a new church in Herentals, Belgium. Located in an incredible place, with strong presence of nature and important historical load… the dominium La Paige, its castle, an XIX century arboretum with very very high trees, the stream that delimited the old city, etc… A primitive shelter that grows from the landscape and becomes part of it. A mass as a dome, built with ultralocal resources, since we will demolish existing building, we propose to reuse the bricks from it…The language of the making… To gather and to recover, as building process and as historical process…
_
