Bayou Chapel

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Apple Lake, Bayou de View, Arkansas

Prof. Marlon Blackwell + George Hascup

ARCH 5101, Traveling Studio

Fall 2012

Bayou Chapel is conceived as a mediator between a dense natural context (i.e. the swamps of the Arkansas Delta Region) and a carefully construed landscape (i.e. a linear artificial levy). The scheme takes its cues from the axial geometry of the levy, formally extending this linear vector across the water, and into the swamp. This sets up a careful choreography of motion and perception— prescribing the way in which the visitor moves from the parking lot, approaches the lake, and catches framed glimpses of the chapel in the distance. The experience of the levy thus serves to inform the experience of the architecture itself. From a distance, the structure is almost entirely consumed by nature. Up close, it asserts itself as an artificial object—a framing device raised above the landscape of the swamp.

Façade and skin studies were derived from two parallel veins of research: an anatomical analysis of the wings of an American Kestrel, a local bird species; and an analysis of local vernacular tectonics (in this case, shingled construction). The structure, hierarchy, and layering of the bird’s feathers, barbs, and barbules become the premise for the skin of the chapel—an array of wooden slats arranged to produce a screen of varying densities.

Bayou Chapel was the result of a collaborative studio with professors George Hascup and Marlon Blackwell, Baird Visiting Professor at Cornell and Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. Most recently, the work was also part of a temporary exhibition titled Birds of a Feather, organized in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY.