The new Carmelite Chapel for the Discalced Friars in Clarendon Street, Dublin is now complete. The Chapel forms part of St. Teresa’s Church and Priory and uses a pared-back post-and-beam framework to create a space which is conducive to prayer, song and private contemplation. The series of cross-laminated timber frames are turned at right angles to enclose the four sides of the space and form a woven structural lattice.
Architecture critic Rowan Moore has written a review of the Bishop Edward King Chapel with the title “The Answers to their Prayers” that was published in the Observer Magazine. The article touches on the broader themes of the interpretation and appropriation of religious symbolism in architecture, and in this context praises the paradoxical nature of the chapel; “It is…heavy and light, a bastion and a boat, a wall and a drape. It has presence, but doesn’t dominate.” Describing the form and materiality of the building Moore writes, “The building is crafted and considered: it makes ideas physical: it has intentions and carries them out in its space and matter.”