Ten miles from the city of Recife on Brazil’s northeast coast, Our Lady of the Conception Chapel, completed by Paulo Mendes da Rocha in 2006—the year he won the Pritzker Prize—shows a reserve that came to the 80-year-old architect late in his career. At the same time, this adaptive renovation, carried out with Eduardo Colonelli, echoes the bold simplicity of the numerous Brutalist buildings Mendes da Rocha designed in his native São Paulo (for the most part) during the latter half of the 20th century.
Commissioned by Brazilian ceramic artist Francisco Brennand, a contemporary and longtime friend of the architect, this eloquent work (also known as Brennand Chapel) was built from the roofless brick ruins of a 19th-century structure on the grounds of the artist’s workshop, the Oficina Brennand, an old family estate and former brick factory that the artist began to redevelop in 1971. Indeed, the two-and-a-half-level, 3,230-square-foot chapel sits on a site of approximately 14,000 square feet in a whimsical complex of lush gardens and restored buildings that includes a museum and sculpture park devoted to the client’s rather extravagant ceramic art.
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