Project name
Location
Competition
Design
Gross floor area
Client

City chapel - Lyhty
Helsinki City Centre
Open competition, honorary mention
2004
418m2
Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa Parish Council

Avanto Architects' entry "lyhty" (lantern) for a city chapel competition was awarded with a honorary mention. The site is in the busiest city centre of Helsinki. The clear vertical building mass preserves the square in front of the central bus station open. A tower containing the sacral spaces hides in the foliage of the old trees.
The park continues as an entrance patio bordered by benches. The public information spaces open to the park through large glass walls. Climbing up to the sacral spaces gives time to calm down. The high chapel space is quiet and dimly lit. The shadows of the trees play on the fifty centimetre thick walls made of light transmitting concrete. The glass fibres cast in the blocks turn the heavy concrete almost immaterial. In the night time the chapel glows like a lantern.