Seven Charging Stations of the Soul | The Plan Journal

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Policy 
Subscribers only
Type 
Essay
Authors 
Andreas Luescher
Section 
CRITICISM
ABSTRACT -

Contemporary alpine chapels have emerged over the past decade driven by the dialogue between the inner world of personal experience and the outer world of the built environment. These chapels are gems located in the pre-alps, where livestock still graze on mountain pastures in the warmer months. The seven alpine chapels discussed in this article take on various forms and purposes, such as a place for prayer, a destination for a pilgrimage, and a place for baptisms and burials. As sacred architecture, chapels were perhaps not seen as epochal creations, but these spaces change the definition and understanding of what a contemporary chapel can be. The seven contemporary award-winning European chapels included in this essay introduce a new architectural vocabulary that challenge the traditional notions of a chapel and its function. The paper articulates a specific relational network (Beziehungsgeflecht) as it explores an analogy between outside nature (physical features) and internal nature (the human organism) that is woven between the human, personal, and emotional experiences one may have while visiting these structures.

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