Our Lady Of Perpetual Succour Chapel, Maxem

A 500-seater chapel built on a site with a steep lateritic cliff at one end. The design engages with the cliff-face by incorporating it into the building as the backdrop to the altar.

 

Built of load-bearing random-rubble basalt and coursed laterite masonry, the structure employs a traditional architectural element that features in many traditional Goan churches - the flying buttress - to give lateral support to the 60-cm-thick basalt walls that go up to 12 m at their highest point.

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Completed in 2006. Photography by Harshan Thomson.