The Mordax chapel of Novo mesto | borut simič

The rearrangement of Mordax chapel was carried out with the aim of improving the quality of worship and increasing the visitor capacity. We had substantial requirements and little space. It was necessary to start from scratch, as the poor shell stood before us, austere and empty; small, yet promising great things. The old entrance doors, crafted by the master carpenter Udovč of Detelova street, were heavily weathered, and so were the brick floor tiles; in the small Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre stood an old bathtub, with various other equipment stored elsewhere; there were only three chambers and a single entrance.

We asked ourselves what a modern church should be. It was necessary to conceive a VISION of space. What is our attitude towards historical continuity, towards the baroque sensibilities? What does the space need and what is superfluous?

Functional requirements, such as flexibility of use, comfort of a large number of people, lighting, acoustics, security, heating and ventilation necessitated working with precision, coordination and a thorough attention to detail.

The creative process and the development of individual details enabled us to assemble a multitude of complex elements into a compact whole that functionally satisfies the objectives we had set.

The new spatial arrangement is based on pathways forming the shape of a cross. The new aisles facilitate the movement of people through the chamber, supplying the centrally-oriented seatings. The circular organisation makes the best use of the available space; it is formed by the circularly arranged upholstered pews made of light Baltic birch, leading to favourable room acoustics without requiring any further intervention. Thus arranged, the pews establish Ecclesia – the church, the parliament of the faithful. An angelic corona in white for a girls’ choir at the edge of the expanse, recalling the rotunda of liberation by Leo von Klenze.A duality was established between the function of an architectural element and its symbolic interpretation.
"Little boat, take me to the house of the Lord," we sing in the old gospel song. The new choir-loft resembles a boat floating in space. The glass surface has a span of 11.35 metres. This is actually where the project began, since enlarging the church was the primary consideration. The eccentric opening in the middle of the glass surface is shifted towards the geometrical centre of the spatial composition, connecting it and enabling us to perceive the space as it used to be.

The material is raw steel, providing contrast to the lightweight visual impression of the translucent glass floor. The supporting structure consists of primary reinforced IPE270 profiles. The structure's perimeter is fabricated out of UNP200 profiles. The secondary profiles are UNP140 and T80, used to support the glass floor surface in a grid with a spacing of 80 centimetres. The structure is anchored to the brick and stone masonry walls, leaving a gap of a minimum of 20 centimetres.

The SPIRITUAL SPHERE of the space and the tombstone touch in an infinitely small point.EMPTY TOMB. It is marked by an outline of the tomb in the tile floor. I am reminded of the advice by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – that we should strive to be perceptive both of the infinitely small and the infinitely large.To simultaneously perceive Man and God. 

Borut Simič