City Chapel

The International Evangelical Church Faith Community approached us with a request for consultations during the phase of searching for rental spaces. The task was a minimal budget with maximum community benefit. After a series of unsuccessful negotiations and a heap of difficult-to-adapt rentals, an unexpected gem appeared in one of the inner courtyards in Prague's Letná. An impressive, albeit aged, hall with a trilobite floor plan, built for the Central Committee of the Communist Party just before the regime fell. The market needs of the 1990s gradually overwhelmed the hall with additional windows and transformed it into garages and offices, until it eventually became morally aged. From this starting form, our conversion emerged.

In addition to converting the office floor into a community center, we built a simple black & white box prayer room in the second floor adjacent to the courtyard building. We returned the elevation and framed the hall with a series of more monumental niches for the dressing room, sound engineer, musicians, and pastor. At the same time, through a series of modifications and connections, we increased the legitimate capacity back from an office for 10 people to a gathering hall. The fragility of the "church in a rental" is reflected in the fragility of its symbols. They reflect the thin boundary between a simple auditorium and a place for religious acts. In the spirit of the evangelical tradition, where a church without people is no longer a church, the symbolism is limited to a disassemblable cross made from an unused picture frame and a central projection. The designed seating arrangement complements the horizontality and intimacy of the community. The color scheme illustrates the belief that despite all complexity, some life decisions remain unequivocal in terms of eternity.