| | The Deaconesses of Reuilly are a Protestant community founded in the nineteenth century with the stated aim of healing and uniting a divided church. Every year, Deaconesses worldwide would gather in the quiet, wooded area in south Versailles to worship together in a hundred-year old chapel. Squeezed to maximum capacity, the gathering inevitably spilled out into a canvas tent set up in the gardens. But when the tent was severely mauled by a gale in 1999, the Deaconesses decided to build something with a little more permanence.
The progressive, gently experimental design for the new chapel, drawn up by Marc Rolinet & Associates, is a little like a ramshackle tent sheltered inside a glass case. Rolinet’s design represents a close collaboration between architects, engineers and craftsmen, using methods both traditional and modern to achieve its fluid and angular shapes. The inner sanctuary of the chapel – an egglike dome – is a deceptively sophisticated construction of curved pine overlaid together in a tight lattice. Built by hand, with the wood curved piece-by-piece in a specially-made steam tank, the structure required 3D computer analysis with Robobat software to calculate its contours. Yet despite its complexity, the sanctuary’s symbolic referents are all primitive: to a cave or cocoon, to the body of a string instrument – and of course to the old tent it replaced, with the light softly permeating the wood as it once shone through the woven canvas.
The outer layer of the chapel is a triangular glass skin. There is a rather lovely interplay between the two materials. While the outer glass screen catches and reflects light, the second, inner screen of trellised wood refracts and diffuses it. Between the two structures of glass and wood, a natural corridor area opens up for meditative strolling. The curve of the building’s wooden core is echoed in the seamlessness of this walkway, which, encircling the chapel, rises at a gentle angle towards the farthest end of the building then descends again discreetly towards the chapel entrance, following the natural rise and fall of the terrain.
The glazing for the walls and roof is a complex composition of layered panels, using laminated and tempered glass of varying thicknesses with air gaps in between. New forms of high performance glass allowed for optimal transparency and exploitation of natural light, without compromising the energy efficiency or safety of the chapel. Using relatively lightweight SentryGlas® Plus laminated glass, for instance, reduced the number of supports needed for the structural frame. The roof is made up of trapezoidal panels, two metres in length, supported by galvanised steel columns. Above, a layer of angled wooden planks set over sturdy steel supports helps to shade the chapel and to shed rainwater.
The combination of a watertight envelope of glass with effective ventilation enhances the building’s ecological efficiency. The heating system is provided by a heat pump, which functions according to thermodynamics. Capturing and recycling the renewable heat from the air, the system works in synergy with the fundamental passivity of the building and significantly reduces energy consumption. Cool air is vented discreetly beneath the benches lining the walls of the inner sanctum, while hot air rises and exits through the gaps between the wooden slats. The building also enjoys excellent acoustics; the glass shell creates a surprisingly effective barrier against noise from a nearby train station, and assures high quality interior sound.
At a time when the future of the natural environment and a constructive relationship with new technologies are at the forefront of social consciousness, Marc Rolinet’s vision has resulted in an inspiring work, intelligently and elegantly synthesising the fundamental elements of architecture: space, materials and light. His practice, with a new second office in Geneva, is hitting its stride. +
1. Marc Rolinet's chapel sits amongst the landscape and follows its contours. 2. Entrance to the sanctury, showing the galvanised columns, the large glass panels and the slanted wood panels that make up the complex roof. 3. The interiors are animated by changeable light effects, created by the patterned structural forms and the exposure to daylight. 4. Inside the tightly-woven structure of the sanctury.
IMAGES Courtesy & Copyright of Marc Rolinet/POLKOP SARL/D Moulinet
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