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Architects: Woo-projects Architects
- Area: 117 m²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Yoon Joonhwan, UrbanRecord, Kim Yongkwan
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Lead Architect: Woo Daeseung
Text description provided by the architects. This small and modest chapel was built on Father Thomas Choi's birthplace (1821-1861). In 2016, the Vatican Church officially proclaimed Father Thomas Choi as a ‘venerable’ figure. The chapel is a modern interpretation of the Jungnimgul Cave, where he spent his final years. It functions as a place that invites all visitors, regardless of faith, to participate in moments of self-reflection.
How is this different from other holy sites? How will Father Choi be remembered in this place? These questions need to be answered architecturally. The site, which is now empty except for the large persimmon tree, seems to provide direction for this holy site. Instead of filling the site with a large house, the residential quarters should be as small a stature as possible to leave most of the site empty. Instead of overburdening the scenery that has long shaped this space, the chapel should seek to preserve his memory. Like the unlit paths he walked at night, a brilliant darkness instead of bright light is more appropriate for this place.
Thomas Choi Birth Memorial Chapel replicates the scene at Jungnimgul Cave. It accurately captures the enclosed cave-like atmosphere, the rough interior, the brilliant darkness, and the lowered altar. The chapel was built as a minimal, small, and empty building facing the site of his birthplace. The long eave that first greets the visitors is an important device for the unoccupied chapel’s sustainability and the site of the birth home-facing frame that takes after the typical appearance and function of Korean eaves.
‘Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido’ – a constellation map developed in the Chosun era –is carved onto the ceiling to reenact how Father Choi might have walked and contemplated the stars above on many a night. To Father Choi, who traversed about 90,000 li (about 35,000㎞) on foot over 11 years, ‘Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido (Celestial Chart Stone),’ which maps the stars shining in the Korean night sky, was his friend and companion during those night journeys. The rock altar below was made using the rock previously embedded in the yard of the presbytery at the Darakgol Holy Site.
As the visitors walk through the winding, narrow corridor that connects the entrance to the chapel interior, people gradually adjust to the dark until they finally meet the space of darkness. The walls of this corridor on both sides were made by stamping patterned bamboo. This pattern, created by cutting and putting together bamboo of 60mm in diameter, was produced with meticulous handwork instead of metal molds in consideration of the isolated site location and budget. The continuous horizontal flow lining both insides and outsides of the wall reunites after making a round around the altar. All visitors will be able to appreciate the dedication of Father Choi in his solitary night journeys through this chapel that invites all, regardless of religion, to a moment of self-reflection and this home that has blended into the scenery.
