Architect… in the Service of the Lord

My beloved grandmother, God bless her soul, was a deeply devout Catholic. Her greatest wish was to go on pilgrimage to Lourdes at the end of her life, but she never made it further than Kevelaer — a Marian pilgrimage site just across the German border near Venlo.

For us as children, Kevelaer was impressive enough. I especially remember the glowing plastic statuettes of the Virgin Mary in little grottoes with tiny doors that my grandmother brought home and that later adorned our bedrooms. A fellow pilgrim once brought her a bottle from Lourdes shaped like a statue of Mary, with a blue cap as a crown. Every day she would take a sip from it and then refill the bottle with ordinary tap water.

“That way it always remains Lourdes water,” she would say.

Photo with a group of participants at the 'Modernists Weekend' in Faro

A Modernist Pilgrimage in Faro

I thought of my grandmother when my friend and fellow architect Ed Vliegen — from the Limburg parish of Schimmert — appeared in the Algarve two years ago to immerse himself, for the first time, in the Modernists’ Weekend in Faro. This small-scale architecture festival focuses on modern mid-century architecture, richly represented in Faro, and in particular on the work of Manuel Gomes da Costa (1921–2016).

Ed, however, had another destination in mind as well: the only project in the Algarve by the renowned Portuguese architect and Pritzker Prize winner Álvaro Siza Vieira.

East of Lagos, on the Casas da Capela do Monte estate near the village of Barão de São João, Siza designed a chapel for a devout American-Swiss couple. Chapels, in the hands of architects, are often extraordinary buildings. Suffice it to mention Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp or Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Chapel in Wachendorf as iconic examples.

Capela do Monte from Álvaro Siza Vieira

Capela do Monte: A Sacred Encounter

Ed had meticulously arranged the visit in advance, coordinating with the estate’s owner and securing a date. He only needed a lift to get there — hardly a problem. I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to finally visit this sanctuary, about which I had previously written on my architecture website architecturalgarve.com.

Our friend Cok (Jacob) Bakker, another Amsterdam-based architect living in the Algarve, was eager to join. Once the hosts were informed that three architects would be arriving instead of one, our small “pilgrimage” toward Lagos began.

Ed and Cok (Jacob) during our stopover in Almancil

A Brief Detour: Souto de Moura in Almancil

Along the way, we made a brief stop in Almancil to admire a striking villa by Portugal’s other Pritzker Prize winner, Eduardo Souto de Moura. The house sits openly along the road, fully exposed — surprising in a region where one expects high walls and gates. It is a white, flat box, with a patio at the back and a collection of primary forms on the roof. The whole composition resembles a children’s shape-sorting toy, with circular, square, and triangular holes into which brightly wooden blocks are pushed.

We linger only briefly. There is no car, no sign of life — just security cameras. Still, we dare to walk around it, half-expecting a Rottweiler to appear or a car with security guards to pull up at any moment.

A Private Chapel, Not for the Public

Apart from a missed turn — which caused us to pass the Lagos zoo twice — the estate was easy to find. In addition to the two houses where the owners live and four beautifully renovated cottages named after local trees and used for holiday rentals, the Capela do Monte, opened in 2018, is part of the property.

This is a private Christian chapel, intended primarily as a place of prayer for the owners and their guests. It is not open to the public, and unannounced visits are explicitly discouraged.

Ed and Cok (Jacob) in and around the chapel with the Swiss lady

Ed’s preparations paid off. The Swiss owner welcomed us warmly and guided us around the estate. After a short walk through the surrounding gardens, the chapel soon came into view, slightly elevated on a slope.

It is unmistakably a Siza building: simple in form, marked by unexpected incisions and a restrained use of materials.

What stands out immediately is the generous platform, serving as a threshold between landscape and building. With Piet Mondrian’s theory in mind — horizontal lines representing the feminine and vertical lines the masculine — Siza convincingly anchors this folly-like chapel in the landscape. A powerful horizontal base gives the small vertical structure a grounding presence, binding it to the land like an entwined couple.

In the Service of the Lord — Mozambique

In the early 1980s, I worked in Mozambique as an architect for the Mozambican Council of Churches (CCM) — in a sense, quite literally in the service of the Lord. Acting on advice from an American organization, this alliance of Protestant churches decided to establish a construction bureau to support a massive emergency aid program. Warehouses, offices, and housing for coordinators had to be built across all ten provinces of this war- and disaster-stricken Marxist-Leninist people’s republic.

Through the Dutch development organization DOG (Dienst Over Grenzen), they were looking for an architect. During my interview, I was asked whether I was sufficiently Christian to work for them. I replied that I had been raised Roman Catholic and still occasionally set foot inside a church. Fortunately, they were mainly looking for someone who could hold his own in a war zone; the Christian “sauce” was therefore applied rather lightly.

When I later learned that the Roman Catholic Church was not part of CCM, that turned out to be my salvation: without “my” church among them, no one expected me anywhere on Sunday mornings.

João, my director at the CCM Emergency Department, once summed it up perfectly:“Next time we may need to look more closely at an architect’s involvement with one of our member churches. Will has his own church service at the jazz club on Saturdays, and then it’s hard to ask him to attend one of ours on Sundays as well.”

That didn’t prevent me from happily playing my tenor saxophone at Christmas Eve midnight mass when my friend Padre Carlos of the Anglican Church asked — together with a Dutch violinist — providing a classical duet for the night service.

 São Cipriano Church in Maputo

Pancho Guedes: The Vitruvius of Mozambique

During my four years at CCM, designing a church never materialized, despite abundant inspiration from outstanding architects. Through my work, I became familiar with the projects of Pancho Guedes (1925–2015), an early (post)modernist of Portuguese origin, trained in South Africa, who worked in Maputo for some twenty-five years until independence.

Among his many works is the São Cipriano Church in Maputo, also under Padre Carlos. Later, I designed a small vocational school on the adjacent site. The video Looking for Pancho follows a young German architecture student in search of Guedes’ legacy. After independence in 1975, Guedes moved to South Africa, becoming a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Internationally, he was part of Team 10 of CIAM, alongside architects such as Le Corbusier, the Smithsons, and Dutch figures Aldo van Eyck and Jaap Bakema.

Video: Looking for Pancho

Only when watching the video did I discover that the original construction drawings were stored in one of the cupboards on site — where they had probably been all along unnoticed.

Classical Churches, Grass Palaces & Unbuilt Dreams

Characteristic of the São Cipriano Church is the recurring cube with a circular opening — a structuralist motif that defines the atmosphere. Equally striking was the abundance of African art integrated into this Anglican mother church.

Guedes designed many churches, earning him the nickname “the Vitruvius of Mozambique.” Vitruvius, the Roman architect, was the first to systematically describe Western architecture in ten books. Guedes, who was also an artist, claimed to work in some twenty-five architectural styles. His churches are therefore all unique.

Igreja da Sagrada Família in Machava

Among them is the Igreja da Sagrada Família in Machava, rich in symbols, with a cruciform plan and a roof resembling a gondola, crowned with crosses at every corner, sailing heavenward.

The Igreja Methodista Westlasnia 

The Igreja Methodista Westlasnia combines a church, a pastor’s house, and a meeting hall. Due to the tiny plot, Guedes simply placed the church on top. The first time I visited, it felt like a church in the attic.

Perspective and model of the Hut Cathedral for Maciene,

His most remarkable projects, however, were the humble churches made of traditional materials — clay, wood, and grass — intended for remote rural areas. Convincing local communities of the value of such materials was always difficult; concrete blocks and roof tiles were seen as symbols of progress.

Designs of the Church of the Twelve Apostles of Gala Masala (l) and the Huttenkathedraal for Maciene (r)

Yet Guedes envisioned a series of extraordinary “palaces of grass.” One of the most intriguing was the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Gala Masala: a vast hut composed of twelve segments, with clay and wooden walls encircling central seating. The roof consisted of circular wooden trusses, with a skylight above the altar.

Sadly, the Brazilian missionary commissioning it lost his nerve, and the church was never built. The same fate befell the Hut Cathedral for Maciene, inspired by a traditional African kraal — four crosses formed by intersecting building elements — immediately rejected by the bishop as inappropriate.

The only structure actually realized in traditional materials was an “illegal” kindergarten in the Caniço (the reed city) of Maputo, built of wood, reed, and grass.

Maconde helmet/mask and painting 'A mulher azul que chora' (1959) by Malangatana (Mozambique) from the African art collection of Pancho Guedes

A surprising Encounter with Siza in Maastricht

After a lecture in Maastricht by Álvaro Siza Vieira — prompted by projects such as the Siza Tower and a cluster of social housing in the Céramique district which he realized under the supervision of architect and later National Chief Architect Jo Coenen — we found ourselves talking.

When he asked me where I had learned Portuguese and I replied, “in Mozambique,” he immediately started talking about Pancho Guedes. “One of our finest architects,” he said without hesitation. He spoke with admiration about a recent retrospective of Guedes’ work at the Gulbenkian in Lisbon he had visited: the projects, the exquisite models carved by Makonde craftsmen, and the remarkable African art collection Guedes had assembled over the years.

Siza beamed. Standing in the university courtyard, he lit another cigarette, clearly content, and we continued talking about my work in Mozambique —in the service of the Lord.