Under the hill. A place for meeting, a commonplace of retreat. The new Chapel aims to reach the top of the hill by building the territory topography and, this way creates a covered space hidden behind an ascending route, which invites all local people around to gather together at the very roots of the hill. This promenade invites visitors to experience a kind of journey from the earthly to the divine.

The chapel is shown as a sort of a hanging object over the landscape. We are invited to enter it by immersing in the earth, escaping this way from the surrounding environment, bringing the community together and fostering links between the individual and the locus.

As a kind of inverted hill, the inside spatial perception arises from the wood layers which forms the chapel skeleton. This stratum invites to raise one’s eyes to heaven and discover how the sunlight penetrates down to the bottom of the sacred space. The open oculus rises upon a different light layers which symbolize the Land of a Thousand Hills, a country of labourers that every day ascend and descend these hills to cultivate the lands. The ritual takes place in a centralized circular space, emphasizing a sense of community, a space belonging to everyone.

From the outside, the chapel is perceived as a non-accessible place, inscrutable, floating… It becomes necessary to approach the temple, surround it and descend into the bowels to admire the inside. This descending promenade requires confidence in the face of the unknown; having no other security but one’s confidence in God. Once inside, the space enfolds and attracts us, the earth and the wood shelters us, and the light becomes our guide.