Sanctuario De La Salle | CAZA

CAZA developed Sanctuario de La Salle, an inclusive religious space within a wider campus concept for De La Salle University in Bian City.

CAZA created Sanctuario de La Salle as a union of various volumes to create a delightfully new and surprising form departing from a church’s typical structure and spatial order. An assemblage of varied shapes provides a spatial experience more than the sum of its parts. It is similar to how humans unite to form a community united by faith and a joint mission.

Rory Gardiner

Sanctuario De La Salle’s Design Concept

The Santuario de La Salle comprises a succession of circular chambers. From the exterior, the structure appears amorphous and mysterious, with a smooth and loose appearance. An outside veneer of vertical slats breaks up the vast volume of the building, lending lightness and permeability to the elevational treatment. The exterior combines raw and untreated materials to emphasize the link with the surrounding natural setting. The materiality shifts to softwoods and metals as you enter the area.

This rhythmic outer covering is a semi-outdoor zone that lets worshipers navigate from the busy academic atmosphere to peaceful, sacred regions. Circular rooms connect inside a permeable ambulatory area, offering nooks for liturgical functions with varying spatial limitations and formalities. Column placement and width are architectural representations of self-discovering bodies moving through space. The chapel is intended to take people and integrate them into a wider, connected group, with its spatial journey providing a physical embodiment of the idea of participation in a faith community as an individual.

Fourteen distinct doorways lead worshippers to a double-height central core, a reminder of mortal humans losing and rediscovering themselves in this world on their unique road to enlightenment. The celestial inclined ceiling of this drum-like congregation space has an arc comparable to the orbit of planets and the moon, highlighting the connection between the individual, the sacred atmosphere, and nature. The lighting is almost star-like, with pendants suspended weightlessly from the ceiling like little dots of light. In the history of church design, a tall clearstory window, like the brightness of a star, conveys the experience of looking up at the light.

This space represents all celestial creatures in an infinitely wide cosmos.
Santuario de La Salle, located on a bustling university campus, allows people to interact with their religion, religious community, and nature. It links culture and ecology, giving attendees a new perspective on spiritual inclusiveness.

Project Info:

Architects: CAZA
Year: 2022
Photographs: Rory Gardiner
City: Binan City
Country: Philippines