Chapel of Eternal Light

A funerary chapel for a small agrarian village in the south St. Michael of island in Azores, in the midle of Atlantic ocean. Based on a water basin linking the village to the upper part of the cemetery, the twofold structure of concrete and metal expands to the sky and light, offering the honorific use and interiority required to pay the last homage to the dear ones parted of the village.

The Chapel is situated in an agrarian village in the south part of St. Michael Island of Azores. The village is composed by a long road parallel to the sea, the usual way islanders had to protect from the ocean troubles, tempests, storms and pirates, and focus on the land, cow breeding, and cereal production. Ponta Garça is particularly special because it's on an upper platform much above sea level. The cemetery is just off this main road, to the upper side, where now new housing is developing. The Chapel organizes a new neigbourhood, with the new building to the kindergarden and elder people to the west, and new road on the east. It links the two levels, of the cemetery and the one of the main road below, throught the water basin projects itself up, as a flower gently tilting forward in order to bow to the village, land and ocean, and projecting it's interior space above, to the big light on the roof, honering the use and the memory of the people of the village. With this the urbanity is composed, being the Chapel one of this elements, altough special, natural and laying smootly on the landscape.

-The structure is twofold, concrete and metal. It is anchored in a first inverted pyramid of concrete and containing the two slabs and sets the ground floor of the sacristy. In those four faces of concrete are anchored metal beams that comprise the support walls of the chapel on the top floor, covered and insulated with screens and panels VIROC painted silver inside and green guatemala marble slabs on the outside supported by the steel structure with an inbetween Facar tubes and clamped by the exterior with steel butons paited copper. It is visible in the concrete base of the pyramid outside the metal parts and support coverage and inside in the upper part of klein blue glass above the chapel, evidence of tectonic structural solution.