Chapel of Eternal Light | Bernardo Rodrigues, arquitecto

"Every point of view is a summit of an inverted pyramid, whose base is indeterminable" Fernando Pessoa, Book of Disquietude.

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

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 new housing is developing. The Chapel organizes a new neigbourhood, with a new building to kindergarden and elder people at west and a new road on the east. it links the two levels, of the cemetery and the one below, throught the water basin projects itself up, as a flower tilting forward to the sun or to bow to the village, land and ocean. Projecting it's interior space above to the light slit on the roof, honering the use and the memory of the people of the village.

The structure is twofold, concrete and metal. Anchored in a first inverted pyramid of concrete with two slabs, the ground floot for sacristy and the top for the chapel. 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 panels 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 painted copper.

Evidence of tectonic structurall solution 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.

Funerary Chapel
Ponta Garça, Azores - 2002-2018

Client - Council of Vila Franca do Campo
Project Leader - Review Execution and build - Francesco Ugolotti - 1st phase - James Grainger 
Collaborators -  Pedro Mosca, Natacha Viveiros, Nuno Malheiros, Laura von Dellemann, Nuno Rodrigues  - Giacoma di Viesti, Katarzyna Malinowska
Engineering - Structural - HDP Paulo Fidalgo  /  Electrical - Pedro Nunes  /  AVAC - Januário Cruz  
Tender - Ana Fortuna - Carlos Tavares
Builder - Caetano & Medeiros   /  Fiscal - Eng. Tavares Vieira Lda - Pedro Câmara  /  Chair manufacturer- Ruta Classe 
Photos – Iwan Baan / Valter Vinagre  /  Paulo Goulart