The Luce Memorial Chapel () is a Christian chapel on the campus of

Tunghai University Tunghai University (THU; ) is the oldest private university in Taiwan, established in 1955. It was founded by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UBCHEA). It is located in Xitun District, Taichung, Taiwan. According to ''Tim ...

Xitun District Xitun District or Situn District (, literally "western village") is the second-most populated district of Taichung, Taiwan. It is located on the western side of the city. Once considered part of the countryside, the district has seen rapid growt ...

Taichung Taichung (, Wade–Giles: ''Tʻai²-chung¹'', pinyin: ''Táizhōng''), officially Taichung City, is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Taiw ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. It was designed by architects

I. M. Pei Ieoh Ming Pei
– website of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners ( ; ; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was ...

and Chi-kuan Chen.

Name

The chapel was named in honor of the Rev.

Henry W. Luce Henry Winters Luce (June 24, 1868– December 7, 1941) was an American missionary and educator in China. He was the father of the publisher Henry R. Luce. Biography Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Luce graduated from Yale University in 1892 ...

, an American missionary in China in the late 19th century and father of publisher Henry R. Luce.

History

The project was originally planned in April 1954 but put on hold until July 1960. Construction took place from September 1962 until November 1963. Construction costs totaled 125,000 USD.

Architecture

The chapel is located on a 3-acre zone in the center of campus, and is set on an irregular hexagonal base, providing 477 m² of gross floor area, including the 245 m² nave (with 500 seats), 81 m² chancel, and 44 m² robing rooms. The church itself is a tent-like conoid structure, with four warped leaves rising to 19.2 m high, establishing itself as a central landmark on campus. The chapel was first conceived as a multi-planar, wooden structure, but the architects soon abandoned the idea of using wood due both to the humid environment and to seismic concerns. The form of four curved surfaces built with reinforced concrete was likely influenced by the design of the

Philips Pavilion The Philips Pavilion was a World's Fair pavilion designed for Expo '58 in Brussels by the office of Le Corbusier. Commissioned by electronics manufacturer Philips, the pavilion was designed to house a multimedia spectacle that celebrated postwar ...

, designed by renowned architect

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...

for the Brussels World’s Fair (known as

Expo 58 Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (french: Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles de 1958, nl, Brusselse Wereldtentoonstelling van 1958), was a world's fair held on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Brussels, Bel ...

) in 1958. However, unlike the Philips Pavilion and other contemporary ruled-surface buildings of the era, Luce Chapel is not a thin-shell structure. The chapel’s planes are composed of lattice beams that gradually grow thicker as they descend. The structural concept might be influenced by that of the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

, completed in 1953 and designed by

Louis Kahn Louis Isadore Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky; – March 17, 1974) was an Estonian-born American architect based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. Whi ...

, another noted architect of the time. The exterior of the Chapel is covered with yellow, glazed, diamond-shaped tiles echoing the diamond-shaped coffer beams on the building’s interior. The Chapel’s elaborate reinforced concrete formwork was created by local craftsmen.

References

External links

Luce Memorial Chapel, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects LLP
{{I. M. Pei, state=collapsed 1963 establishments in Taiwan I. M. Pei buildings Chapels in Taiwan Tunghai University Churches completed in 1963 National monuments of Taiwan

Name

History

Architecture

See also

References

External links