Church of Church | Studio Tngtetshiu

In the 1960s, Taiwan experienced significant social development and political changes, leading to the construction of numerous new churches of varying scales. Many of these churches adopted existing structural systems used for factory warehouses, which are cost-effective and efficient construction methods. One such example is St. Raphael Catholic Church, built in 1961. Located on a narrow piece of land in the city, the church’s narrow access road gives it a character of being independent from the urban environment. After several years of being idle, the church wishes to repurpose part of its space to serve as an office for a community children’s early intervention service foundation while retaining its original function and sanctity of a church.

The design focuses on the relationship between the building types and the internal spatial organization, attempting to address the classical proposition of symmetry found in Western church building types. In this project, a building is considered as an independent object keeping a certain distance from its environment. The difference between the sanctuary and the newly incorporated office space represents the contrast between a spiritual space that seeks inner peace and a social space that connects with the public. We use “duality” as the core concept of this design, paying attention to the composition and proportion relationship of the plan and section, and organizing the new and old spaces using the spatial technique of “segmentation.”

The exterior maintains the overall integrity of the original church building, with a steel frame system inserted inside to separate the sanctuary and the office area. This creates a parallel system with scale differences that reference each other alongside the wooden truss system of the church’s roof. The original rectangular space of 18m x 9m is divided into two independent square spaces of 9m x 9m each, changing our perception of the elongated scale typical of church architecture.

The position of the new altar in the sanctuary has been significantly adjusted to maintain the central axis of the original main entrance, distinguishing it from the entrance to the office area on the other side. The church, which originally had a single frontal façade, now has two misaligned central axes due to the incorporation of the office space. After experiencing these two seemingly different yet subtly related spaces as a unified spatial experience, the spatial narrative of “duality” is finally realized.