ST. THOMAS CHAPEL

St. Thomas Chapel at St. Matthew in-the-City (Simon Devitt Photography)

Under­taken whilst work­ing for Salmond Reed Archi­tects in Auck­land, New Zealand, this project entailed the design of a new enclo­sure for a his­toric chapel which had been stored in pieces in the crypt of the church for more than 80 years. It also entailed the replace­ment and relo­ca­tion of the pipe organ, the redesign of sev­eral ser­vice based spaces within the church and atten­dance on var­i­ous aspects of her­itage repairs and main­te­nance through­out the church.

The Chapel from the cross­ing (Simon Devitt Photography)

The spe­cific aims of the project are to respect the her­itage fab­ric of the chapel and the wider church, while allow­ing for the ongo­ing use of the space through sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in spa­tial plan­ning and ser­vice deliv­ery. As Project Archi­tect to the South Transept Devel­op­ment I worked with Senior Her­itage Con­sul­tant, Peter Reed (for­merly a found­ing Direc­tor of Salmond Reed Architects).

The Chapel at night (Simon Devitt Photography)

The Chapel which formed the cen­tral com­po­nent of the brief was sal­vaged from a sig­nif­i­cant Angli­can mis­sion­ary ship, the South­ern Cross V, which was wrecked on a reef off the coast of Van­u­atu. The beau­ti­fully carved Eng­lish oak pan­elling that was sal­vaged from the ships chapel endured two fur­ther instal­la­tions in churches in Auck­land before the oppor­tu­nity to reassem­ble the chapel was realised.  The reassem­bly of the inte­rior was under­taken with the aid of his­toric pho­tographs, writ­ten accounts and foren­sic analy­sis of the sur­viv­ing pan­elling. Work­ing closely with the car­pen­ters to reassem­ble the inte­rior of the chapel we have been able to once more restore its orig­i­nal use in its orig­i­nal configuration.

Detail of the onyx lantern over the chapel (Simon Devitt Photography)

I designed the exte­rior of the chapel, includ­ing the stone lantern, along with the adja­cent kitchen and sacristy.

Care­ful detail­ing and close rela­tion­ships with the crafts­men cho­sen, allowed for very small tol­er­ances and excep­tion­ally crafted tim­ber and steel work.

The design of cus­tom door hard­ware among other steel details were also part of the project and allowed for the design to be con­sid­ered holis­ti­cally. The cus­tom detail­ing also extended to the design of the altar and deacon’s bench.

Clay Nel­son per­form­ing the com­mu­nion ser­vice (Simon Devitt Photography)