Bayer & Strobel    Germany   A small ceremonial space nestles under a pronounced pitched roof that rises high over the walls of the graveyard but engages in dialogue with their materiality. The spaces create a contemplative mood through the carefully choreographed entrance of li

Adjaye Associates   United Arab Emirates   On Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, the Abrahamic Family House headquarters has been inaugurated. It embodies the historical bonds linking three Abrahamic religions – Judaism , Christianity, and Islam – and provides a platform for dialogue and coexisten

Cabrera Arqs   Mexico   Meant to be a place for reflection, silence, and prayer, and for a community whose members practice different religions, this underground chapel disappears in the landscape of San Antonio Baspul, a locality within the municipality of Chicxulub Pueblo

TEd’A arquitectes   Belgium   The new church reconstructs a hillock that was located behind the second city wall of the 17th century, now disappeared. The old pit will be cleaned and emptied out to facilitate the formwork process of the future structure. The geometric halls of th

Adjaye Associates   United Arab Emirates   The development of Saadiyat Island on Abu Dhabi’s northern coast is an ambitious tourist and cultural push to create a new center in the UAE capital. Besides various commercial and residential operations, the plan includes raising eight outposts of f

Adjaye Associates   Ghana   The recently refurbished gardens of the cemetery of Osu, a busy neighborhood east of the central district of Accra, is the site of the project for the new National Cathedral of Ghana. It will complete a ceremonial and scenic route through Osu Cemeter

Tadao Ando   France   This space was designed as a commemorative project for the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the UNESCO. The brief requested a ‘space of meditation’ for global peace, transcending all religions. The pavilion is located within the complex o

Tadao Ando   Japan   The temple of Water, the main one of Ninnaji Shingon, the oldest branch of tantric Buddhism in Japan, rests on a hill with views over Osaka Bay. The project proposes a sensory experience, a shift from the ordinary world to the sacred space. The appro

Tadao Ando   Japan   island of Hokkaido, in northern Japan. On a plain surrounded by mountain ranges and a dense forest of beech trees and shrubs, the building comprises two superposed cubes, a rectangular artificial lake, and a long L-shaped wall enclosing the complex.

Mario Cucinella Architects   Italy   A parish center located in the very heart of Calabria presents solutions for an architecture that is loaded with references but does not forget to incorporate sustainable mechanisms. The temple is fitted into a sinuous white volume around which the S

Miralles Tagliabue EMBT   Italy   The open and organic architecture of the parish marks a contrast with the heavy and compact center of the city with a radially undulating roof that reinterprets the archetypal form of Romanesque and Gothic aisles through nature.

BUZZ - Büro Ziyu Zhuang   China   Working out of offices in Berlin, Beijing, and Shanghai, the practice of Ziyu Zhuang took on this project in Qingdao. Located within the Zangma Mountain Tourism Resort, it is a reinterpretation of traditional church architecture, maintaining elements

Sancho-Madridejos   Spain   A small space for prayer rises amid hundred-year-old oak trees and becomes a visual reference in the expansive Manchegan landscape where a large rural estate is located. Situated not far from the new residence of its owners, the chapel is the result

Dellekamp Schleich AGENdA Agencia de Arquitectura   Mexico   On 19 September 2017, an earthquake jolted the city of Jojutla in the Mexican state of Morelos, destroying over 2,600 homes and leaving nearly all public infrastructures in ruins. The team formed by AGENdA Agencia de Arquitectura | Camilo Restrepo (C

Kengo Kuma   France   The project called to build a contemporary gallery to protect the western portal of the Gothic cathedral of Angers, where precious polychromatic sculptures from the 12th and the 17th centuries have been recently discovered. To create a harmonious dia

Alberto Campo Baeza   Italy   Heaven on Earth. That is how I have more than once described my intention when designing the houses I have built, every single one of them. This is the latest. All the more reason to make it a piece of Heaven on Earth. In Venice. It is an honor for a

Bevk Perović arhitekti   Slovenia   Besides a new place of worship, an ensemble of buildings provides a Sunni community with spaces for leisure and gathering, and seeks to trigger an entire regeneration of the zone. The language used avoids historicism and reinterprets traditional icon

ArchStudio    China   A sanctuary is buried under a mound, preserving the beautiful riverside scenery around it and creating an intimate atmosphere conducive to meditating in harmony with nature. With the objective of not felling any of the trees on the site, the project

Tatiana Bilbao   Mexico   The project to build a church is set forth as an opportunity to favor social cohesion in the area. The massive volume is divided into thirteen sections, each different in program, and the circulation within the enclosure is inspired by that of old ch

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Situated next to Yoyogi Park in the Tokyo ward Shibuya, the Meiji Jingu Shrine is a Shinto temple dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji (1852-1912) and his consort, Emperor Shôken (1849-1914). Blending with the surrounding trees, the new

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   Along the A13 highway outside Andeer, a municipality in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, the firm Herzog & de Meuron will build a chapel with four 10-meter-high white walls positioned at angles to support each other in a play of inclinations. Chal

Vector architects   China   The image that inspires the project is that of an old boat adrift in the ocean for years. With time, the ocean recedes and leaves an empty structure behind, still lying on the beach. Starting from this poetic image, the project focuses on both the in

Kengo Kuma   Germany   By stacking fir tree strips, the Wood/Pile meditation space recreates the komorebi effect produced by sunrays when they are filtered through the trees, in a forest near Krün in Bavaria.

In a society that tends to be in denial about its inevitable finitude, being reminded that architecture is intimately tied to death can be considered unsavory. With our spaces placed at the service of production, our homes, pleasure, education, or th

Alberto Ballesteros   “Von Herzen zu Herzen gehen!” The sentiment Beethoven encoded in dedicating his Missa solemnis to Archduke Rudolph is what Paolo Zermani pursues with his most spiritual work. And if the composer of symphonies and sonatas, more than of oratorios, chan

In obstinate resistance to real estate speculation, the small early 20th-century St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stood in the vicinity of the World Trade Center like an anachronistic residue of 1920s Manhattan, but was completely destroyed in the

A sicilian architect based in the city of Bologna, Mario Cucinella has designed a church devoted to St. Maria Goretti in Mormanno, a Calabrian town in the very heart of Pollino National Park. A cross is cut onto the surface of a sober white volume of

Luis Fernández-Galiano   At dusk on Monday, April 15th, just in time for the evening news, the world was treated to the horrendous spectacle of uncontrollable flames licking the roof of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The fire spread from a scaffold that had been installed si

Dominique Perrault   Notre-Dame, the heart of the heart of Paris, treasure of the Île de la Cité, has just suffered one of the most trying moments in its long history. Across all lands and cultures of the world, this drama leaves us speechless, touching the hearts and ar

Joaquín Medina Warmburg   In the work of Eladio Dieste, whose birth has been one hundred years, technical ingenuity was placed at the service of the social program and Catholic fervor.

The temples conceived as spaces for rigorous observation of the liturgy have given way to places where collective faith and individual introspection live side by side. 

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Places for gathering or for meditation, the spaces for the spirit celebrate at once the communion of believers and the intimacy of introspection. Be it in the West or in the East, temples offer stages for worship and rooms for individual prayer, brin

Tras la Catedral de Los Ángeles, la Iglesia Iesu, en San Sebastián, constituye una nueva indagación de Rafael Moneo en la arquitectura religiosa. Situado en el umbral de un área residencial, el edificio descuella de la trama urbana por el volumen com

La nueva sinagoga de Maguncia (Mainz en alemán), diseñada por Manuel Herz, se levanta exactamente en el mismo lugar que ocupaba la que fue quemada por los nazis en 1938. Esta dramática huella histórica ha constituido uno de los desencadenantes del pr

La reciente consagración como basílica de la Sagrada Familia de Barcelona —oficiada con la presencia del Papa en noviembre de 2010— ha vuelto a poner de actualidad la polémica sobre la pertinencia de la continuación de los trabajos en el templo proye

La iglesia y el centro parroquial San Jorge en Pamplona, realizada por los arquitectos Tabuenca y Leache, ha abierto sus puertas en el barrio del mismo nombre de la capital navarra. El proyecto pone en relación las dos plazas urbanas que lo rodean a

En el año 2001 la Conferencia Episcopal Italiana convocó un concurso nacional para la construcción en la localidad de Foligno de una nueva iglesia «que simbolizara el renacimiento de la ciudad» tras el terremoto de 1997. Los ganadores fueron el matri

En el municipio madrileño de Rivas Vaciamadrid se ha consagrado el centro parroquial de Santa Mónica, obra de Ignacio Vicens y José Antonio Ramos cuyo volumen expresionista en acero cortén contrasta subversivamente con el continuo de unifamiliares qu

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Expelled through the door, the sacred now Ereturns through the window. A small convent in Ronchamp and a large museum in Jerusalem illus-trate two opposed ways of resolving the conflict between the sacred and the profane in the contem-porary world. I

Carlos Jiménez   The same week in spring 1996 that Rafael Moneo received the Pritzker Prize in Los Angeles, he was also awarded by one of those coincidences of fate the commission to design that city’s cathedral. Delivering his acceptance speech at the Getty Center,

Vittorio Ucceli   Paesaggio Sacro

Ramón Rodríguez Llera   Arquitectura de las Misiones Jesuíticas en el Oriente Boliviano