ARQBR's concrete church seamlessly blends with Brazil’s limitless skyline

In conjunction with Brazil's urban environment and post-war modernism, emerges a pivotal intervention where sacral spaces meld harmoniously with the contemporary fabric of the city. The vocabulary of religious architecture displays a rigorous acumen that experiments with concrete materiality and modern geometries, and brimming with theatrical capacity. One such exemplary project is the Church of the Holy Family by ARQBR Arquitetura e Urbanismo, which encapsulates Brazil’s spirit of a forward-thinking approach. The visionary design is inspired by the work of Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa and serves as an extension of Lucio Costa’s pilot project for the city of Brasilia.

The concrete religious facility is located in the heart of the Brazilian highlands, taking advantage of its surrounding landscape. Quoting Costa’s words about his initial perceptions and sensations after encountering the chosen site for the construction of the new capital of Brazil, Brasilia, the architects express, "I found the Planalto, that horizon without limit, excessively vast. It was out of scale—like an ocean with immense clouds moving over it. We would be creating a landscape by putting a city in the middle of it." Furthermore, the team adds, "Beyond the sense of organisation and orientation, the horizon expresses the vision of the whole and, primordially, the connection between the observer and the environment, a condition necessary to manifest the landscape.”

EPIA (Park Road of Industry and Supply), which began to be controlled by the federal government in 2004, transformed into an expressway, having had its lanes extended and its traffic segregated, and almost all trees felled to accommodate the marginal lane. This resulted in the surrounding landscape losing its bucolic character, further reinforced by the partitioning of the land, the extensive growth of housing and commercial enterprises, creating fissures in the urban configuration with a landscape under constant change. The Brazilian architects conceived the Church of The Holy Family in light of the expressway phenomenon, presenting modest yet striking concrete volumes that synthesise the fundamental premises of Brasilia—the building’s implantation into the topography and opening to the horizon, the integration of private and public spaces, and lastly the use of landscape as an organising element.

The complex consists of three structures—a linear, elongated annexe building, a circular building and a monumental steeple that stands alone as a symbol of guidance for the faithful. The main body of the church is the circular design which constitutes the chapel and is half-submerged in the landscape. The smooth concrete surface is lifted off the ground plane by six pillars structurally embedded into the topography and a metallic truss roof. There is a ring of windows along the ground line and a perimeter skylight which allows penetration of abundant natural light, giving an illusion of a floating form. "By revealing the presence of the horizon, the architecture becomes a constitutive element of the landscape, an opening to the poetic dimension of the world, connecting the material reality to its spectator’s gaze,” adds the Brazilian architecture firm ARQBR.

The foundation wall, on the interior, creates a bowl-like condition by tilting outwards and gently sloping to the ground line. The vertical wooden screens around the circumference of the space, provide texture and pattern; with two dominant material palettes—soft grey concrete planes and warm wooden furniture. The tonality of the form is determined by two main axes. The northwest-southeast axis connects the circular nave, the annexe, and the existing church building to the back, which is used for parish activities. At the perpendicular northeast-southwest axis, the horizon line crosses with the vertical volume of the campanile that guides the visitors.

A deep, cantilevered roof outlines an underground corridor, accessed by a curving staircase behind the altar that connects the circular nave with the bar-shaped annexe. A grid of horizontal and vertical beams supports this protrusion, resulting in a dynamic play of shadows along the building’s edge. The Church of the Holy Family shows tenacity amidst the urban morphology of the highland expanse. With elemental geometry and shapes, the meditative piece of architecture is humble and contemplative at its heart that draws from its surrounding nature. "The architectural concept adopted unfolds itself from the relationship between spirituality, nature, and community,” concludes the team.

Project Details

Name: Church of the Holy Family
Location: Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil
Completion Year: 2022
Total Floor Area: 3,900 Sq.M
Architecture Office: ARQBR Arquitetura e Urbanismo
Project Lead Architects: Eder Alencar, André Velloso, Luciana Saboia
Collaborators: Paulo Victor Borges, Margarida Massimo