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.
Author and Cambridge academic Mary Ann Steane has written on the Chapel’s “lyrical embodiment of liturgy and light” in an article published in Architecture Today. Dr. Steane previously included the Carmelite Monastery project in her book ‘The Architecture of Light’. The article in Architecture Today elucidates on the Chapel’s filtering of natural light through the internal timber structure, as a means of tying the building to its surroundings.
“On a sunny day the upper surfaces become an animated embroidery of light and shadow in tune with the surrounding windblown foliage, but even on a dull day the way that light is held within the tall enclosure is critical to the project’s narrative of tethering.”