FREE’s Miami Chapel is an Innovative Church Modeled After the Pleats in the Lady of Guadalupe’s Robe

While developing a design scheme for a new Miami chapel, the architects at Mexican firm <a href="http://fr-ee.org/projects/miami-chapel-miami-florida/#project-images" target="_blank">Fernando Romero EnterprisE (FREE)</a> have stepped into a fairly uncharted territory for contemporary religious architecture. The design of the flowing, cone-shaped structure has distinct religious connotations, translating the symbolic figure of the Mexican Virgin Our Lady of Guadalupe into the language of built space.

The chapel attempts to bring together all Latin American virgins and become one unifying ecumenical structure.

The soaring form of the building acts as an acoustic filter, while the gold patina of the concrete surface along which the light pours into the interior gives a soft glow.

FREE has designed a volume resembling the pleats of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s cloth.

The main congregation space opens up from the entrance, accompanied by confessionals and other supporting functions.

The volume is rotated towards one corner, thus improving visibility of the interior spaces.

The 27 sanctuaries form a ring around the congregational space, with one dominant figure in the presbytery.