BNKR Arquitectura have designed this strange contemporary church in Acapulco, Mexico, closely related to the natural environment of the challenging site.

The project consisted of 2 religious commissions, a wedding chapel celebrating the first day of a couple’s life together and a chapel of mourning the passing of loved ones. The design of the chapel had to fulfill this spiritual antagonism, as well as not alter the natural site.

The building, monolithic in shape, was built with a pedestal, extending high above the giant granite rocks on the site, nestled in vegetation. It had to be built such as to have the setting sun behind the altar cross, with the first phase of crypts included outside and around the chapel.

The concrete boulder seems to grow from the more organic rocks below, giving an impression of brutalism and futuristic utopia. However, the chapel level is perforated for daylight and the beautiful sight of the trees. The spectacular lighting of the angular faces and perforations, the contrast between glass and concrete, heaviness and transparency, classical axis and contemporary chaotic shapes are meant to underline the antagonism of life and death.