Bishop Edward King Chapel by Niall McLaughlin Architects.

I love a good chapel.

Compact space redolent of however-many-centuries of religious thought, practice, space, and music one can imagine. Places of peace, quiet, and reflection. Places of succour and support for the soul. And in the hands of the right architect, cracking opportunities for beautiful architecture.

And so to Britain, where Niall McLaughlin Architects has added the Bishop Edward King Chapel to the cluster of buildings at Ripon Theological College nestled in the countryside north of Oxford.

In plan, this chapel is close to the wonderful Roman baroque churches like Bernini’s Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, a perfect ovoid drum. But the criss-cross tracery of the timber beams brings the internal expression of the building closer to the gothic.

The chapel provides space within space – a ring of columns bend inwards and enmesh, referencing an existing forest glade, within the masonry and glass superstructure. To my eyes the architecture also references the expressed tracery and ribs of gothic vaulting, readily connecting this clean modern room with a far more ancient and mysterious kind of architecture. Worshipers are contained in this little structure-within-structure as figures of saints are contained within niches – housed and made special.

Light falls on the faceted brickwork facade and animates the chapel without. Daylight penetrates the inner sanctum in bright stripes, filtered by the clerestory and made more complex by the inner timber latticework.

I would love to see this building twinkling in the long dark of the English winter. Better book some plane tickets and brush up on the Christmas Carols.

Ende.

Text by Luke Moloney for Yellowtrace.

[Images courtesy of Niall McLaughlin Architects. Photograph by Dennis Gilbert.]