austin chapel

8/14/2019 Austin Chapel

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Story by Sarah Rich Though it looks as i it could be olded up

and carried o like a lawn chair, the jointed

cedar stands frmly in place thanks to ten-

sion and two strong cables.

With the lightness and

imagination of origami and

the mathematical exactitude

of digital design, this open-air

chapel invites all creatures

into its folds.

Whn ak ab rlgn, Frank

Lloyd Wright once said, I believein God, but I spell it N-A-T-U-R-E.

O course, he was in good company

among generations o believers in

the divinity o wilderness, whatever

their aiths. That common connec-

tion was top o mind when architect

Murray Legge set out to design a

nondenominational interaith chapel

on a Cub Scout campground out-

side Austin, Texas. Working with his

students at the University o Texas at

Austin, Legge created a structure that

speaks directly to Wrights spiritualpoint o view.

Tucked into a orest clearing on

the edge o a wide, lazy river, the cha-

pel is really no more than a geometric

latticework gently enclosing a portion

o the open space. According to Legge,

a design and project architect with

NarGrac

the frm LZT Architects, the structure

took inspiration rom one o Wrightsbrightest pupils, Fay Jones, whose

Thorncrown Chapel in Arkansas

a graceul inversion o European

Gothic cathedralsturned the tradi-

tional house o worship inside out.

When you stand in the chapel, the

rough-hewn cedar structure eels

natural enough to have grown there

among the trees, but Legge empha-

sizes that despite its organic appear-

ance, the building owes its existence

to the technological precision o

computer-aided drating. I like tothink o it as Calatrava meets Daniel

Boone, he says. During a classroom

exercise in Google SketchUp, Legge

ormulated a set o rules that yielded

a mathematically exact structure,

then programmed the identically

measured components to rotate

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o looking at the structure each time he

visits it. When the sun goes down in

summer, he says, the light through the

wood sets the whole thing on fre.

Visitors to the chapel have compared it

to a Japanese warrior helmet and the early

construction phases o a wooden ship.

Legge (bottom) says he fnds new ways

The sot exterior o the rough-hewn cedar

(top) peels away rom the planks in places,

hanging ree like Spanish moss.

CAD fle to meet exact specifcations.

A contractor was hired to assemble

the structure, assuming that in spite

o the many pieces, their limited varia-

tion would make the process airly

simple. But slight irregularities in the

wood and the subtle changes in the

angle o each joint made the task more

challenging than it originally seemed.

The building process took twomonths. Legge made the one-hour

drive rom Austin every weekend

to check on its progress, sometimes

fnding that segments had been bolted

inaccurately then mended as well as

possible without sacrifcing the custom

joints. I would come out here and

see some pieces put together wrongly

and the contractor would joke with

me, saying, Oh, it just needs a little

tweak, Legge recounts, nodding in

the direction o a pile o tools under a

tree. You see that sledgehammer over

there? We call that the The Tweaker.

The fnished product, however,

reveals little in the way o production

hiccups. The 23 jointed rames are

held together on each side by nothing

but a horizontal cable. Though the

structure is stable, it appears almost

skeletally delicate, the upper slats shit-

ing like the tops o the trees when a

breeze sweeps through. That reedom

o movement goes against everything

in architecture, Legge says with a hint

o excitement.

In the context o a Cub Scout camp,Legge views the bare-bones design

as an educational opportunity. You

can really see how its built. Kids here

can get inspired about architecture.

The orientation o the structure also

provides an education on seasonal

rhythms and light, raming the sunset

directly on the summer solstice, and

fltering its light at increasingly long

angles through the year.

Unoccupied or in service, the chapel

possesses an uncommon peaceul-

ness. The west-acing pews invite quietcontemplation and provide a listening

post or erratic symphonies o birds.

No matter what events take place

here in the years to come, the small

cedar chapel will create a rame,

not so much to contain whats inside

it, but to magniy what surrounds it.

incrementally, creating the curvature

o the chapelseight sides. The digital

fle was like a set o instructions or

putting puzzle pieces together, says

Legge. All they needed to do was cut

the pieces and fnd a puzzlemaster.

Choosing cedar or the building

material made sense purely on aes-

thetic grounds, given the added bonus

o its rich color and intense ragrance,but the decision was largely based on

convenience and the responsible use

o local resources. Cedar is a weed

here, Legge explains, adding that the

regional terrain was mostly grasslands

beore the invasive species took over.

A sawmill just down the road rom the

Cub Scout camp, which was originally

a cedar-chip mill, turned out to be

a perect source or dimensional

lumber. Legge opted to use standard

cut pieces, most o them thick and

rusticated, with fner-sawn pieces or

the upper reaches.

To hold the 184 wooden planks

together, 138 steel plates were CNC-

cut by a local abricator using Legges

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