A space for silence and contemplation in the Bavarian Forest was designed by London architect John Powson and commissioned by the Siegfried Foundation and Elfriede Denzel. A place for rest - along the path of the bike path that runs through the forest - and that allows you to find in this small architecture a space for a momentary rest for the mind and body.
The chapel is made up of sixty tree trunks from Denmark that are simply stacked on top of each other. The Douglas fir trunks have been cut into large straight beams and stacked so as to look like "a pile of trunks stacked to dry".
The use of wood in its most natural form is at the basis of the thought of this small space that wants to maintain by form, space and matter a relationship with the surrounding landscape.
The architect himself explains that: "Inside the chapel, the glory of the cut wood is immediate, in its warm tones, in its tactile surfaces and in the patterns of the sawn veins".
It is not the first space for contemplation designed by the English architect, we can remember among his most important projects the Monastery of Novy Dvur (2002) in the Czech Republic and the church of St. Moritz (2013) in Bavaria.
Compared to the two previous projects, this small chapel immersed in the silence of the forest is typologically simpler and therefore characterized by a single narrow and long room where a simple bench runs the entire length of the perimeter wall positioned in front of a small opening that addresses the surrounding landscape. As in the classical temples, a crepidine in concrete permentte to raise this wooden architecture from the ground: a symbolic but also functional detachment.
On the short side opposite the entrance area, a simple cross carved in wood is illuminated by natural external light. At the top two slits of light run along the two long walls allowing a soft and uniform light coming from above.
