2014 FAITH&FORM • IFRAA INTERNATIONAL AWARDS PROGRAM FOR RELIGIOUS ART AND ARCHITECTURE RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE • NEW FACILITIESHONOR

The site’s name was the “End of the World”, one of the city’s last slums. The brief was determined in a participative process involving local community in order to guarantee the project’s social sustainability, resulting in a church, a community centre, a primary school and auditorium.The creation of a new identity in order to rescue the site from its decade long negative stigma was one of the main goals. Anonymous suburban surroun-dings offered no interesting references; hence, the church’s tower as an iconic reference.A courtyard connecting to the city’s existing pu-blic spaces opens to a steep valley offering distant seaside views. Today, the “End of the World” is known as Senhora da Boa Nova (or Our Lady of the “Good News”).

We believe designing sacred space should revolve around the ability to state the supremacy of the Void. Throughout the project’s development, the key conceptual elements were two empty spaces: the courtyard, a place where the community could meet; and the nave, a sacred space presenting that which could not be presented.Today, the church stands within an elliptical plan, providing a dynamic sense of scale, and covered by an interior dome, eliminating the wall/ceiling division and spatial references within. The windows are deep, bringing indirect natural lighting into the nave and distancing the suburban surroundings, and the exterior walls curve to present an anthropo-morphic object holding within the ilimited, infinite, and irrepresentable Void.

ArchitectsFilipa Roseta,PartnerFrancisco Vaz Monteiro,Partner

Design TeamInês FontouraPatrícia DuarteBruno AlmeidaAna Margarida Mendes

Structural EngineerJLCM, J. Câncio Martins

Hydro EngineerJOULE, C. Gonçalves

Acoustic EngineerDUCTOS, V. Sampaio

Contractor EDIFER

PhotographerJoão Morgado

Lisboa, Portugal

ROSETA VAZ MONTEIRO ARQUITECTOS

BOA NOVA CHURCH ESTORIL, PORTUGAL 2009

GENERAL PLANSECTION B

SECTION A

ELEVATION