A blackened-brass entry cross functions as a brise-soleil to shade the glazed west-facing chapel entrance (above) on Loyola’s main academic quad (top of page). Photo © Timothy Hursley, click to enlarge.

With its plan of interlocking circles, the building supports a commingling of the interfaith and the Catholic. There are just two main spaces: a community gathering hall and a soaring daylit sanctuary that holds regular Mass services. Firm founder and CEO Trey Trahan calls it a “contemporary sacred space.” Each area is set in plan in equal radii. The sanctuary, narthex, and side chapels follow a traditional cruciform axis and are encircled by the nonecclesiastical areas, including the community space, a multipurpose room, and restrooms. There are also smaller interstitial spaces, like an interfaith prayer room, which is adjacent to the community hall and can be accessed via a secondary entrance at the south of the building.

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Interfaith spaces can be accessed via a secondary entry (1) without entering the narthex (2) or sanctuary (3). Photos © Timothy Hursley

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The interiors of the chapel are elegant and muted. The airy, stripped-down sanctuary, featuring a large rooftop oculus and a soft-gray acoustical wall system, is populated by custom white ash furnishings, designed by Parisian studio Goons in collaboration with Trahan. The liturgical items are designed by the firm with local and national artisans, including black ceramic chalices and plates and various blackened-brass objects such as candle stands, dedication crosses, and the baptismal font placed in the geometric center of the building. The striking movable altar is by Irish furniture-maker Joseph Walsh. Ringing the perimeter of the sanctuary is statuary by noted Italian woodcarver Bruno Walpoth—a hobbled Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a pregnant Mary, and Jesus on the cross. The liturgical art and objects all respond to a central design concept of “formation”—a sense of what Trahan design director Robbie Eleazer calls “stillness and action”—that meets college students on their own formative journeys.

“The interior’s very quiet palette makes it almost feel like an art museum,” says Eleazer, who is based in the New Orleans firm’s satellite studio in New York. “The objects feel more precious because the architecture is quiet and still. It makes moments of encounter [with the liturgical art] feel more intense.”

The chapel statuary is by Italian artist Bruno Walpoth. Photo © Timothy Hursley

With 38 percent of Loyola students identifying as non-Christian or “other” during the 2021–22 academic year, the chapel was created as a more intimate, inclusive alternative to the Jesuit university’s largest worship space, Holy Name of Jesus Church. That building was dedicated in 1918 to replace a smaller wood church relocated several years prior from a nearby site along St. Charles Avenue.

“It feels inviting to some who have grown up nonreligious, but not at the expense of those who are religious and resonate with the traditional church,” says Trahan of the project’s dual focus on worship and community. “It resides in that space almost in between.”

A circular skylight floods the chapel with daylight. Photo © Timothy Hursley

Although it distinguishes itself from the primary place of worship on campus, the chapel has more in common with Loyola’s original wood church than meets the eye. Beneath the handsome brickwork isn’t a steel frame but a cross-laminated timber (CLT) drum comprising 32-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide panels—35 wall panels and three soffit panels in total—produced with southern yellow pine. (The roof structure, however, is steel.) Giving new meaning to “mass” timber, the chapel is the first CLT structure in Louisiana. While the contractor initially proposed hanging the brick from a steel frame, CLT ended up being the most economical—and time-efficient—choice while being able to withstand hurricane-force winds. “Once the contractor stopped thinking about it as a bespoke mass-timber thing, they realized that this could be erected in about two weeks, versus the months it would take for a steel frame,” says Eleazer. “The structural ingenuity and sustainability that the CLT gave the project is amazing.” (Eleazer and Trahan Architects partner Brad McWhirter credit late project designer Conner Bryan with pushing for the use of mass timber at the firm; he died in 2021, at the age of 34, before the CLT design for the chapel was conceived.)

Apart from the use of CLT and the pared-back approach to liturgical design, the most remarkable thing about the chapel is its stillness, free of the faint hums, whooshes, and whistles emitted by modern buildings. Sitting in the hushed sanctuary—the quiet comes courtesy of a small HVAC system, tucked away in an acoustically isolated mechanical mezzanine—it’s easy to imagine St. Ignatius himself sequestered in a Catalonian cave, praying and contemplating in silence.

Images courtesy Trahan Architects