We dwelled on the idea of ‘sacredness‘ in Rwandan history. 

Rwandan culture, society, and economy has been affected largely by the brutal genocide of 1994. The Rwandan people have been victims and perpetrators of her own destructive impulses. Rwanda today stands in peace, having overcome her troubled past, looking out for a prosperous future.

Spaces hold traces of events that take place in them; the people who lived there, their lives and experiences. The Earth Chapel is simply an exploration of this idea. 

The question is how can these spaces infest the human mind and raise questions about humanity.

With the use of materials such as Earth and Wood that go through their own cycle of life and death, the architecture attempts to create a sense of temporality – a reminder of the temporal existence of all things around us. 

This approach in embracing architecture as an extension of nature itself, is used to trigger the historic memory of Rwanda, as well as to evoke a sense of spiritual contemplation. 

The typology of a church with atrium, narthex, nave and altar has more relevance than being a mere syntax for sacred spaces. They depict the different stages of sacredness that a visitor is intended to go through – beginning with the individual’s gesture to enter a sacred space, that transitions into attaining a collective understanding of sacredness, and finally culminating in achieving a sense of consciousness – understanding the presence of divine within yourself.