Constructed from sixty-one Douglas fir logs, this intimate chapel sits in a forest near the village of Unterliezheim in southwestern Germany. Its architect, John Pawson, was commissioned to create the elegant minimalist structure as a part of the Sieben Kapellen (Seven Chapels) project. Besides the local community, the chapel serves as a wayside for cyclists to find shelter.
According to Pawson, he didn’t want the building to speak too loudly: “People should encounter the chapel as a found object at the transitional point between the forest and open ground, rather than as a conventional work of architecture. The structure is thus framed as the simplest of gestures.”
John Pawson CBE, Architect | Photos by Felix Friedmann
