Our Lady of Sorrows Chapel in Nesvačilka

In southern Moravia the land opens wide, a sweep of gently rolling fields. Nesvačilka has changed little since the Baroque period; its original topography preserves a natural rise, visible from afar. The site seems destined to fulfil a Baroque ideal of cultivating the land. There are no forests or outcrops here—only soil and fields—so the choice of locally scarce natural materials, stone and timber, was chosen to symbolise a purpose: to carry faith into an austere landscape. The plan is centralised; set on the hilltop, the chapel reads as a landmark and an orienting point—in space and in spirit.

The community chose Our Lady of Sorrows as patron, acknowledging the sufferings she bore. To translate that story and feeling into space, the sanctuary is raised upon the very dust that becomes the floor. The lower course is in gneiss, a figure of the human condition—stubborn, disobedient, difficult to mould. From these stones seven radiating timber beams lift towards the heavens, evoking Mary’s Seven Sorrows and binding people to God. From above descends a veil like Mary’s tears. Sunlight continually reaches the heart of the chapel through small windows interwoven with the delicate timber structure. The building is ringed by the Stations of the Cross; an avenue of apple trees leads to the chapel, and an orchard behind it ties back to the fields.

The build follows medieval craft logics and is executed with contemporary tooling. The floor is compacted rammed earth; the walls are built of quarried stone. A lamella timber gridshell (lozenge lattice) carries the roof, assembled from over a thousand timber members, CNC-milled and locked at the nodes with wooden pegs and wedges. Fifteen-metre-long beams, hand-carved, freely traverse the interior, and the roof is crowned by a steel spire. At the entrance, five-metre-high doors open directly into a tightly composed interior; the perspective of the beams and surrounding structure draws the gaze upward.

The experience rests on how light shifts through the day and how sound carries. The materials are allowed to breathe over time, rather than rely on added ornament. All materials are natural, tactile, and marked by workmanship, lifting perception beyond the everyday. A key criterion in selection was the capacity to weather well and develop a durable patina over time.

Because the project relied entirely on donations, a longer programme let the team revisit the design, refine tolerances under financial and technical constraints, and tighten sequencing on site—work that ultimately brought the chapel to completion as planned.