Some introductory commentary on chapel design

(Brendan)

I mentioned in my background post that at a certain point in the development of our idea of what a Catholic home should be and needed to be, that I thought it should have a chapel as part of the design. The idea of having a part of the home that functioned as a real chapel fit so well with other aspects of our family life, such as homeschooling and our practice of family prayer time, that it seemed like almost a necessity. Of course, a family doesn't need a chapel in order to do family prayer time or even for individual prayer time, but I don't know of many faith-centered families that would disagree that a chapel would significantly enhance these activities. And that's what building this home is all about, enhancing and assisting all family activities that are ordered toward our purpose: to know, love, and serve God and his Church. All such activities can be done in any environment, we simply desire the best environment for our family (the engineer in me desires an "optimized" environment, but I won't go there).

To this end, in regard to the chapel I started on a research project of my own. First, it was fairly simplistic. I wanted to find out if anyone else out there had conceived of a private chapel in a home and actually put it into practice. Not a private chapel for a religious community, which are fairly common, or a chapel in an ordained minister's residence, such as a bishop or priest, but a chapel that was designed into a residential single-family home. I researched quite extensively throughout the internet on this question and found the answer: yes, this has been done before, but very, very rarely. In fact, I have only been able to find two such instances in all my searches (feel free to post a comment if you know of any others that aren't findable on the internet, or let me know if I missed some that are).

The architect for both of these private home chapels is Duncan Stroik, in my opinion (which I only gained after all of my research) the foremost American Catholic church architect today. He doesn't only design Catholic churches, but his churches are certainly what he is known for, and what he can rightfully claim (in my opinion) to be the best at in America. In fact, I would say that he's the best in the world right now, though I haven't done as much research on international Catholic architects. Let's take a quick look at these two private home chapels.

Here is a chapel that Duncan Stroik designed for a home in Nebraska, dedicated to the Holy Family.

Go here for more pictures and an explanation by Duncan Stroik.

This is a ridiculously, almost absurdly beautiful space. Based on what I know now regarding the amount of custom pieces designed for this chapel and the types of materials used, I'm guessing that just this chapel alone cost somewhere on the order of $1,000,000. No, that's not a joke. So the natural question is, is this worth it? I guess it depends on the family, they obviously are quite wealthy. There's no question that if we tried to emulate the materials of this chapel and the detail and custom artwork, it would be immoral for our family, because we would be spending an exorbitant amount of money (that we don't have) on one space to the neglect of our children's welfare. But one can recognize and honor beauty so pure as this when one sees it.

One aspect that I'm not so sure about is the tabernacle. I trust this family got the permission of the local bishop to have an actual tabernacle in their chapel, with the blessed sacrament contained inside it, and I wonder about this. It would not be our intent to replace the function of our local parish in any way, and I wouldn't want to set up such a dual structure, where we might even be tempted not to keep our scheduled weekly adoration time because, heck, the tabernacle is right in our own chapel. Further, having an actual tabernacle with the blessed sacrament is far, far more responsibility than I would want in my house. There's innumerable things I could imagine our kids doing that would not be compatible with having a tabernacle (Aidan climbing and jumping off of it comes to mind).

Moving on, let's take a look at the second. This is a chapel that Duncan Stroik designed for a private residence (actually a ranch) in Lubbock, Texas, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Here's the link to the description by Duncan Stroik.

This is less opulent than the previous chapel, but it still fulfills its purpose: to lift one's spirit up to the Lord in prayer and reverence. This is a rather large chapel in that it seats 36 people. It's also detached from the main home, which is not what we would want for our home because it lessens the integration with the daily family life. I would like to frequently "pass by" our chapel and be prompted to prayer, rather than having to make an act of the will to go to the chapel outside of the main home. Still, I bet this is exactly what this family wanted, given that they live on or own a ranch. It could be somewhat of a retreat to be at this chapel, and I love the little courtyard out in front.

As I considered these chapel designs, and why they "work" or are "good" examples of Catholic architecture, I realized that I wasn't really well versed on the specifics of the architectural language of Catholic churches through history. Duncan Stroik was clearly employing specific elements of this historical language, but I didn't know what they were. And if I was going to have intelligent ideas about our own chapel, I realized I needed to research and learn (something I am never averse to). I leave what I learned for the next post. In the mean time, take a look at the stunning portfolio of Duncan Stroik's work. As a bit of a teaser for future posts, I actually corresponded with Duncan Stroik over e-mail about our chapel, and got some great ideas and information! As always, God bless!