Ten acclaimed international architects including Norman Foster and Terunobu Fujimori have built an incredible series of modern chapels for the Holy See on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore as part of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. Tucked into the woods, the temporary chapels collectively form the Vatican Pavilion. The number ten references the Ten Commandments, and the project symbolizes the concept of ‘via pulchritudinous,’ which means ‘way of beauty.’

It’s the Vatican City’s first ever exhibition for the event, and each individual chapel offers a unique way to engage with both the physical setting and the divine. The architects were asked to look at the century-old ‘Woodland Chapel’ in Stockholm by Erik Gunnar Asplund for inspiration. Curator Francesco Dal Co, who professes that he’s not Catholic or even a believer, notes that the chapels are meant to be enjoyable for everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs.

Norman Foster

Foster + Partners created an airy, open chapel made of open wooden slats forming a membrane around three central crosses. Built by Italian furniture company Tecno, the chapel includes a ramped steel floor structure. The steel masts and cross arms are braced by steel cables. Jasmine vines planted around the structure will climb it throughout the summer. All ten pavilions are due to be taken down on November 25th, 2018.

“The project stated with the selection of the site,” says Foster. “On a visit to San Giorgio Maggiore, close to Palladio’s magnificent church and the Teatro Verde, I found a green space with two mature trees beautifully framing the view of the lagoon. It was like a small oasis in the big garden, perfect for contemplation. Our aim was to create a small space diffused with dappled shade and removed from the normality of passers-by, focused instead on the water and the sky beyond – a sanctuary.”

Eduardo Souto de Moura

Along with Foster, Switzerland’s Eduardo Souto de Moura is the second Pritzker Prize winner participating in the Vatican’s pavilion. His contribution looks monolithic from outside, with slabs of weathered-looking stone surrounding a small altar, but it’s more open than it seems. The narrow space inside is lined with benches, and only a portion of the roof is covered. At the entrance, visitors must navigate around a pre-existing tree.

“No, it is not a chapel, not a sanctuary and in any case not a tomb,” reads the text from the ‘Vatican Chapels’ catalogue. “It is simply a place enclosed by four stone walls, while another stone at the center might be the altar. The entrance is screened by a tree we want to conserve. The walls, inside, have a ledge on which we can sit and wait… waiting with our feet on the ground, head in hands. ‘Things themselves know when they ought to happen.’”

Smiljan Radic

Chilean architect (of Croatian heritage) Smiljan Radic envisions his chapel as a “roadside shrine,” inspired by places along roadways where grieving loved ones leave flowers for people who have perished in accidents. Radic notes that in any chapel, the scale is a trick, as the small building tries to have as large of a presence as a church or temple.

“Perhaps due to this desire for greatness, the elements of architecture seen in them are miniaturized,” he says. “Windows doors, columns are shrunk down, just big enough for a person to fit through, and their walls are large opaque sheets, avoiding the perforations that would betray this exquisite domestic size… all this confuses us and we are left doubting the human scale. In this way, in a chapel and also in a roadside shrine, the monumental and the domestic live in harmony. This seems to be the basis of the issue in my small conical chapel, with its thin walls and open roof.”

MAP studio

MAP studio, led by Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel, present the Asplund Chapel, housing the drawings of architect Gunnar Asplund. The design references Asplund’s work but reduces it to the scale of a hut, clad in wooden shingles interrupted only by triangular skylights on either side.

“The exhibition is integrated into the pavilion itself: a unicom defines the entire interior space and hosts, in the articulation of the thickness of the walls, the reproductions of the design drawings by Gunnar Asplund for the Skogskapellet, the texts and the models.”

Carla Juaçaba

Utter simplicity defines the contribution of Brazilian architect Carla Juaçaba, whose ‘chapel’ is really just a series of metal bars creating a stark symbol in the grass of the island. The surrounding vegetation defines the ‘interior space,’ a meadow of benches gazing at an oversized, minimalist cross.

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10 Architects Design Modern Chapels For The Vatican At The Venice Biennale

An infusion of art revives a cold, gray public square like a healing draught, drawing people in and encouraging them to stay a while, interact with each other and see their city from a new point of view. Every day we pass through these public spaces in a rush to get to our destinations, hardly noticing the plazas themselves or each other. These playful interactive installations bring color, movement, activities and fun to underutilized or under-appreciated locations in urban settings.

Red Planet Playground in Shanghai

In a shopping center plaza on one of Shanghai’s busiest streets, a textural red playground installation takes a formerly blank, grey space and turns it into a center of play and interaction. Created by the firm 100Architects, it includes a basketball field and lots of objects to climb, sit on, lay on or slide down. “Our proposal arose from a surreal approach, from the intention of breaking the conventional rules of perception, of what is already conceived as a reality, in order to trigger kids’ imagination and creativity as well as immersing them in a colorful experience.”

Liquid Shard by Patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics

A shimmering silver wave spanning 15,000 square feet hovers above Pershing Square in Los Angeles like a colossal sea creature out of its element. ‘Liquid Shard’ by artist Patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics is made of holographic mylar and monofilament, shimmering as it’s blown around by the wind. “Like fractals recurring progressively, we feel the currents of air on our skin but do not see the larger movements. I wanted to play in that realm with this technology I have been developing.”

Vieux Port Pavilion by Foster + Partners

Architecture firm Foster + Partners turned a Marseilles square upside-down with this mirrored canopy installation. Vieux Port Pavilion, named for its location, adds a new functional sheltered space with minimal visual impact to encourage pedestrians to gather and linger. It may be subtle, avoiding drastic changes to the character of the square, but it acts like a magnet, drawing people in to gaze up at their reflections.

Impulse: See-Saws at the Place Des Festivals in Montreal

Who could pass by a bunch of illuminated see-saws on the street and just keep walking? Impulse by CS Design and Lateral Office inserted 30 of these objects into the Place Des Festivals in Montreal, and while they’re fun on their own, users are in for an unexpected treat when they get on. “Once in motion the built-in lights and speakers produce a harmonious sequence of sounds and lights, resulting in a constantly evolving ephemeral composition.”

Live Young: Evian Swings Activate a Snow Machine

Bottled water brand Evian challenged adults to find their inner children with a pink playground at Canary Wharf in London. ‘Live Young’ consists of swings and seesaws that activate snow machines for an extra magical effect in the hope of helping locals push through the gloom of post-holiday winter. “Evian’s giant playground installations are the perfect way to help stressed workers get in touch with their ‘Live Young’ spirit by letting go and having fun.”

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Plaza Play 13 Artistic Installations Make Public Squares A Lot More Fun

That MacBook Air-shaped roof on Apple’s new Foster + Partners-designed store may look cool, but it’s also apparently pretty dangerous in the face of Chicago’s brutal winters. Most of the store’s outdoor space has been roped off in the aftermath of extreme cold this week, with large icicles dangling from the roof’s edges and signs reading ‘Watch for Falling Snow and Ice’ strewn all around. As reported by local blog Spudart and 9to5 Mac, the flat roof seems to be collecting precipitation, which is then freezing as it drips down the sides and creating an accidental ice skating rink on the walkways.

It’s easy to mock the store’s designers for putting form over function and failing to think about such an obvious component of the building’s everyday conditions – this is Chicago, after all, where temps regularly dip below zero, and wind chills of -30 are expected over the next week. But Apple says the situation is not what it seems.

“The roof has a warming system that’s built into it,” says Apple spokesperson Nick Leahy. “It needed some fine-tuning and it got re-programmed today. It’s hopefully a temporary problem.”

So, the issue is actually a technological malfunction rather than a design flaw. The idea of building ice-melting abilities right into the roof is actually pretty cool, and the roof design also includes internal support columns that funnel water away from the edges, eliminating the need for gutters.

Stairs are inherently utilitarian, but some architects choose to really step up their interiors with highly sculptural designs that make you want to walk up and down a bunch of times. Cantilevered creations, floating stairs, spirals made of stone and zig-zagging graphic designs add both literal and figurative movement to these apartments, museums, offices and shops.

Stone and Wire in London by Groupwork + Amin Taha

During the completion of a renovation on a terraced house in central London dating to the 1950s, Groupwork + Amin Taha created a gorgeous centerpiece with this stone staircase, spiraling around a central cylinder-shaped wire cage, which acts as a balustrade. The load-bearing cantilevered travertine staircase extends from the basement to a skylight in the apartment’s roof.

Atrium Stairs at Moscow’s Dominion Office Building by Zaha Hadid

There’s something very futuristic-looking about the stark, graphic black-and-white stairs zig-zagging through the atrium of Zaha Hadid’s ‘Dominion Office Building.’ Each level is slightly offset from the next, producing a disorienting effect when looking down at the stairs from the edge of any of the balconies.

Mirrored Staircase at Kaleidoscope House by Paul Raff Studio

Sometimes, all it takes is a little creativity to produce a stunning effect, rather than a large space and expensive materials. The staircase ascending through Paul Raff Studio’s Kaleidoscope House features mirrored side panels on the balustrade which continue onto the landings of each level, reflecting each other so you can’t quite tell what’s real and what’s reflection. This piece is the heart of the home’s ‘kaleidoscope effect.’

Plywood Puzzle Stairs in London House by Tsuruta Architects

This staircase in a London Home renovated by Tsuruta Architects consists of nearly 2,000 plywood pieces slotted together like a puzzle. Replacing a larger staircase with a more compact design, this new creation connects all four stories without visually obstructing the transitional spaces between them, allowing light to filter through.

Smooth Staircase at Singapore Apple Store by Foster + Partners

It’s not unusual for Apple stores in larger cities to function as showcases for architecture nearly as much as they do for electronics. In this case, internationally renowned firm Foster + Partners augmented “the greenest Apple space yet” with two hand-carved spiraling staircases made of Italian Castagna Stone. The architects describe them as “warm and beautifully sculpted bookends” in an “homage to craftsmanship and materiality.”

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A Few Steps Higher 14 Unusually Artistic Modern Staircase Designs

Construction is in full swing on Chicago’s new Apple store by Foster + Partners, revealing a surprise design feature that wasn’t visible in the firm’s early renderings: a gigantic MacBook for a roof. When the project was initially unveiled in 2015, the drawings depicted a sleek two-story structure with river views, glass walls and a slimline roof canopy that looks like it’s precariously balancing on slender supports. But construction crews recently added a shiny metallic silver finish to that canopy – and a familiar white Apple logo.

The store is a relocation of Apple’s Chicago flagship, and will measure about 20,000 square feet. The glass walls range from 14 to 32 feet in height, but there’s little danger of breakage, as they consist of four layers of half-inch-thick glass melded with additional layers of thicker laminated glass. The carbon fiber roof is made of a similar material as yacht hulls, which is what gives it that iconic sheen. It’s four feet thick in the center and just four inches thick at its tapered edges.

You can see this unexpected addition in action in the video above. DNA Chicago reports that crews affixed the logo and left it in place for no more than 60 minutes before removing it again, but it seems likely that it’ll return, especially since the Chicago Tribune reported back in March that the logo would be part of the design. The Tribune has more photos of the construction process.