Precious palimpsest: Synthesizing and refining historical influences, this new chapel in Rotterdam's Catholic cemetery forms a dignified yet poetic setting for the rituals of death.

Carla Bertolucci

The Catholic cemetery of St Lawrence in Rotterdam dates from the mid nineteenth century. Designed by H. J. van der Brink as a campa santo, an Italian field of the dead, the cemetery is focused around a central chapel, surrounded by radiating paths. The original neo-Gothic chapel fell victim to subsidence and was replaced in 1963 with a tepee-like structure covered in copper.

This too became unstable and Francine Houben of Mecanoo was commissioned to design a chapel -- the third on the site -- reinforced with new foundations. Conceived as a delicate jewel case, Houben's chapel stands on a plateau of gravel within the contours of van der Brink's original building. Before she embarked on the design, Houben was due to make a visit to Venice and took the opportunity to explore its many churches and chapels, notably the Baroque Jesuit extravaganza of Santa Maria Assunta and Santa Maria dei Mirocoli, a fifteenth-century church resembling a reliquary casket. The impact of this historical exposure is transmuted and refined in the new chapel of St Mary of the Angels.

With its expressive roof, golden ceiling and undulating walls, the chapel has elements of Baroque sensuality, yet the intimate interior exudes an air of contemplative calmness and sobriety. Contained within the footprint of the original neo-Gothic chapel, the flowing, guitar-shaped plan emphasizes the continuity of life. As Houben describes it 'The visitor stands still and reflects and then goes on his way, as a symbol of life that goes on'. Clad in horizontal strips of tin-plated copper, the sleek curved wall appears to float in space, held clear of the ground and separated from the tautly folded plane of the roof by a narrow band of clerestory glazing. Inside, the wall is an intense blue, the traditional colour of the Virgin's robe, with Requiem texts in many languages, reflecting the great cultural and social diversity of Rotterdam's population.

The golden ceiling is artificially lit from below, so it glows with a gentle lustre. Holes punched into the roof admit shafts of daylight, an effect which is accentuated when incense is burned. Two heated timber decks indicate the places of the priest and congregation and a clock salvaged from the 1963 chapel hangs in the skeletal campanile. Fittings are elegantly austere. Oak is used for the simple benches and bier and polished concrete for the altar and pulpit. Candlesticks are made of non-treated steel.

Deep in the heart of a rather gloomy nineteenth-century cemetery, the miraculous apparition of the new chapel shines like a precious jewel. Beautifully judged and executed, it is a gorgeous palimpsest that tenderly connects humankind with the unfathomable mysteries of the numinous.