Studies in proportion and transformation: floating around a great cubic void.

A square window turns into a spatial object through the unfolding opening-operations that allow for increasing amounts of ‘material’ to enter the room: first light, then views, and finally air.

In the chapel, transformation relates to the way in which the structure engages the site with the program. The space of the chapel is defined as an empty volume (nothingness) surrounded by a wall which slowly unravels around it, describing the experience of entering a sacred zone. The wall starts as a heavy mass (housing the clergy quarters within the earth). As it turns, it loses its materiality: it is lifted, cut, bent, and finally removed, to allow the chapel to open its ‘soft’ inside to the soft protection of the forest. The chapel is located along the Erie Canal in Upstate NY.