building blocks

Each year, as part of MADE, five Australian students will travel to Denmark, and five Danish students to Australia. While in the host country, the students will work together on a collaborative design project, and get the chance to study and tour local buildings. The students will be pooled from different design fields - two from architecture, two from engineering, and one from the built environment - working together in the spirit of multidisciplinary design.

The idea for MADE originated from the story of the Sydney Opera House. While the Danish architect Jorn Utzon was the lead designer on the project, the building would never have happened without the input of various engineers, consultants and collaborators - most notably, structural engineer Ove Arup, who collaborated closely with Utzon on the design of the ribbed concrete shells.

The Kamppi Chapel of Silence was commissioned to complement Helsinki’s selection as World Design Capital and, once the year-long festival is over, will remain in the city. Designed by K2S Architects, the chapel is located in one of Helsinki’s busiest retail squares. The skewed, ovular building sits confidently on its site, its timber rings contrasting the commercial buildings nearby. Up close, you can appreciate the fine striations of the spruce strips that wrap a beautiful warm envelope around the structure.

Entering the chapel, you experience an odd reverence, though of a contemporary kind, unlike that elicited by great monumental churches. The chapel commands respect for something greatly needed in today’s world: silence. It’s a unifying force that seems to touch all who enter the Kamppi Chapel, and the result is a near soundless space, a place of quiet reflection and refuge from the world outside.

As a space, it also encourages pause. The chapel is a subtle and beautiful building that aims for calm over grandeur. Its interior volume is a single ovular room, lined with curved timber boards. Slender and seamless, these warm boards encircle and cocoon the space, wrapping visitors in a gentle embrace.

A white ceiling hovers more than ten metres above, suspended in the space by glulam beams, surrounded by a halo of light. It too is gentle rather than dramatic, and casts a soft glow around the chapel, bathing it in sunlight.

The warmth of the timber contrasts with the dark-stained concrete floor, and furnishings in the space are sparse. Religious iconography is abstracted to a bare minimum – as currently, the chapel serves no religious function.