Calungsod chapel at SM inaugurated

CEBU, Philippines -  The multi-million Chapel of San Pedro Calungsod at the SM Seaside City at the South Road Properties was consecrated and inaugurated yesterday, paving way for its opening on Sunday.

Estimated to cost over a hundred million, the chapel will be donated to the Archdiocese of Cebu by the family of Henry Sy, the owner of SM.

The chapel’s inauguration and consecration started with a Mass celebrated by Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma at 3 p.m.

The official pilgrim image of San Pedro Calungsod was brought to the chapel through a motorcade from the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral.

It will be placed at the San Pedro Calungsod Shrine at the Archbishop’s Palace.

But the chapel will have its own replica of the statue of the second Filipino saint and a first from the Visayas.

RJ Leduna of SM City Cebu said the archdiocese appointed Msgr. Vicente Tupas as rector of the SM Seaside’s Chapel of San Pedro Calungsod.

The construction

According to Engr. Edgardo Cruz of EC Cruz Corporation who is the structural designer of the chapel, the construction started on May 3 this year.

He said they worked 24 hours a day to hit their target date of completion.

The whole structure was done in September 30 and everything was finished yesterday morning just in time for the chapel’s inauguration.

The design

New York-based architect Carlos Arnaiz, who designed the chapel, said this is the first time that he worked for a project in Cebu and was quiet challenged since he believed that Cebu is the heart of Philippine design culture.

“Our design for the Chapel of San Pedro Calungsod is meant as homage to Cebu’s dynamic spirit. The building is grounded in the long history of ecclesiastical architecture wherein light and structure work together to inspire,” said Arnaiz.

The design is contemporary, which is both futuristic and contextual. The walls of the building are oriented to establish visual links to the surrounding landscape – hills to the west, seas to the east and a new urban complex rising in the middle.

“The Church stand as a sanctuary stone, sand and glass from where we can meditate on the changes happening in the world and find strength in our encounter of the inexplicable mysteries of God,” said Arnaiz.

He shared that they wanted to design a sacred space that embodied the contemporary search for meaning. They imagined the church as a mysterious place, a building that resists simple categorization.

The chapel invites people to wander around its grounds and discover the 14 sunken gardens, which represent the 14 Stations of the Cross, along with pockets of blue light and an enigmatic profusion of talismanic walls.

“Our design for the Cebu church encourages the visitors to treat their visit to church as a search. The bliss of existence is in the thought that in each path taken there is a lesson learnt. The multitude of doors and passages in the Church serve as an architectural representation of God’s open-ended love,” said Arnaiz.

He said that like a forest, the design appears to be a puzzling structure of stone and sand that has risen from the ground almost without explanation.

All the walls are located in one direction so that the building is completely opaque from one side and totally transparent in the opposite view.

The walls are aligned along a grid that follows the spacing of the pews marking the relationship between the minute scale of the individual and the cosmic scale of the universe. The monolithic quality of the walls plays off the fleeting reality of the one colored light that filters through the clearstory windows.

“For the Chapel of San Pedro Calungsod, we revisited the Gothic idea of God as both a mysterious and rational being,” said Arnaiz.

100 walls

The chapel has 100 walls and each wall has a unique height and width so that they seem almost like people, who are diverse yet are all connected.

“It is kind of a mysterious building in the outside and an unusual building as well. The 100 walls show the diversity of the people. The systematic links and gaps between the walls create opportunities to locate the many different auxiliary spaces required in large churches. The walls come together to form a kind of congregation,” said Arnaiz.

The chapel is designed to occupy a seating capacity of 800 people. —  (FREEMAN)