Several years ago, Italian architects Diego Quadrelli and Silvia Terrenghi of FATmaison received an unusual commission after going on a holiday to Gabon, the oil-rich West African country with a population of 1.6 million. Acquaintances introduced the two to Dr. Marcel Eloi Chambrier-Rahandi, a former prime minister of this country (which won its independence from the French in 1960). Later, when his wife, Roselyne Ossengue Chambrier, died, he decided to build a chapel and tomb for her on wooded property near their home in Libreville, Gabon's capital. The client was enamored of Italian architecture and its traditional use of Carrara marble. The architects, whose office is in Monza, Italy, near Milan, had a modern design in mind and favored Cor-Ten steel cladding with channel glass. So they came up with a scheme that combines both traditional and modern materials and typologies. Known as the Revival Sunset Chapel, the 1,780-square-foot structure, whose symmetrical plan resembles a priest's vestment, has a curved Cor-Ten apse embracing the altar on the west, where Carrara marble dominates the interior. Black marble covers the floor of the dark rectangular tomb on the east, also enclosed in Cor-Ten. In the middle, the chapel's steel frame rises to a series of narrow gables crossing the nave. While the serrated roofline vaguely recalls an early modern factory, Quadrelli notes this motif recurs in Gabon's decorative objects.
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