The Morning Chapel

BACKGROUND: The Morning Chapel is Flores and Prats' (the studio practice of Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores) contribution to the series of 'Vatican Chapels Pavilion of the Holy See' for the Venice Architecture Biennial 2018. Located on the eastern edge of the island, the terracotta-toned structure features a high-level window that is aligned to channel the first sunlight of the day down to the altar. CONTRIBUTION: The chapel is understood as a wall that accompanies the road in a parallel way, inviting you to leave the path through it and entering the forest, into the unknown. Devised as a meeting place and shelter, the modernist chapel is conceived as 'an excavation in a wall', and is riddled with apertures that create different aspects and contrasts of light and shade. 'In a field of sombre and enclosed chapels designed by singular male architects, The Morning Chapel is a delightful and colourful folly that is permeable and open to the surrounding garden' (Mortlock and Neustein, Architecture Australia). This project demonstrates the practice's extreme sensitivity in shaping light and respecting existing conditions, which was evident in another work produced for the Biennale, 'Liquid Light.' SIGNIFICANCE: Flores and Prats were invited as one of a select group of ten international architects commissioned to build chapels for the Vatican's Biennale debut; the series was curated by Professor Francesco Dal Co, Italian architecture historian and editor of Casabella magazine. The Venice Architecture Biennale - arguably the most important global gathering of the built environment - attracted more than 220,000 visitors from around the world during its six month duration. The project has been reviewed extensively in professional journals and magazines.