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

The classic silhouette of a church may be iconic and instantly recognizable, but modern-day religious architecture proves itself to be adaptive after all, evolving into a broad variety of dramatic shapes that frame views of the natural world and prioritize a sense of community. These 14 modern church designs run the gamut from small, modest chapels on the beach to grand, showy structures with undulating rooflines and unexpected interiors.

Cliffside Cross-Shaped Church Concept by OPA

Mimicking its own Casa Brutale design for a residence built into a cliff face, Greece-based firm OPA (Open Platform for Architecture) reveals ‘Chapel of the Holy Cross,’ proposed for the island of Serifos with a single cross-shaped glass facade facing the Aegean Sea. The entire structure is dug into the rock to take advantage of thermal insulation and avoid disrupting the surface landscape.

Synhavnen Church Proposal by NOMOstudio

Submitted as a proposal to a competition to design the first new church to be built in Syndhaven, Copenhagen in 30 years, this design by NOMOstudio is envisioned as a landmark with a deeply sloping roof covered in steps, allowing the public to climb the structure all the way to its peak for spectacular views of the sea.

Seashore Chapel by Vector Architects

Right on the sand of China’s Beidaihe Beach, the ‘Seashore Chapel’ offers a peaceful getaway. “We imagine the seashore chapel as an old boat drifting on the ocean long time ago,” says Vector Architects. “The ocean receded through time and left an empty structure behind, which is still lying on the beach.”

Rainbow Chapel by Coordination Asia

Located within a museum park, ‘Rainbow Chapel’ by Coordination Asia aims to attract young creative couples with a bright, contemporary design enclosed in 3,000 vivid glass panels in 65 colors for a kaleidoscopic effect. Its exterior design of a circle set within a square references fullness and unity contained by honesty and virtue.

Sunset Chapel by BNKR Arquitectura

The sun sets over the sea directly behind the altar cross in ‘Sunset Chapel’ by BNKR Arquitectura, which is set within a forest and designed to mimic an oversized boulder. The faceted concrete structure looks different from every angle, and features slatted openings along its upper level that let in fresh air and sunlight.

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Faith Lift 14 Modern Churches Reinvent Religious Architecture

Dramatic and sculptural, monolithic as a stone monument or light as a bridal veil, these churches, chapels and meditation rooms eschew conventional architectural typologies for places of worship, prioritizing the way the structures make visitors feel while they’re inside. Some emphasize a connection to nature, while others encourage internal reflection or symbolize the act of marriage with unexpected visual metaphors.

Minimalist Chapel

Reinterpreting the stark, minimalist works of sculptor Richard Serra in architectural form, this blade-like chapel rises from the flat grasslands of Serbia, offering a space for meditation. Stockholm-based architect Predrag Vujanovic creates a strong perpendicular line contrasting the landscape with just two main elements: the folded steel of the roof, and the cortex steel sheets making up the ramp.

Ribbon Chapel

Japan’s most striking wedding chapel consists of two separate stairways that spiral up to the sky, joining into an observation platform looking out onto the sea at the pinnacle. The space beneath is glassed in to create an airy interior fitting up to 80 guests. From the center of the nave, one can look straight up into the oculus skylight framed by the spiral of the ramp.

Kamppi Chapel of Silence

Solid wood and windowless, this egg-shaped chapel on the southern side of busy Narinkka Square in Helsinki, Finland offers a quiet place of refuge. CNC-cut, glue-laminated sections of timber create the curving walls of the striking space, leading the eye upward to the void between the perimeter and the roof, where sunlight streams in.

St. Voile Chapel

A series of white pipes climb the walls of the St. Voile Chapel by Kasahara Design Work, interweaving in flowing organic patterns as a visual metaphor for marriage. Located on the banks of Niigata’s Shinano River, the chapel is largely defined by the play of daylight on these interior lines, which streams in through a pair of skylights at the pinnacle of the steep and narrow roof.

Gratitude Open Chapel

Set against the landscape of Lagunillas, Mexico like a series of four monumental stones, the simple white elements making up ‘Gratitude Open Chapel’ by Tatiana Bilbao + Dellekamp Arquitectos don’t actually form an interior space at all, but rather an outdoor gathering place for pilgrims making the holy ‘Ruta del Peregrino’ route.

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Intelligent Design 14 Strikingly Modern Places Of Worship