Quarry Chapel

A non-denominational retreat asked for a single room for gathering and silence, on a remote high-desert site where every truckload of material had to travel hours to reach. That constraint became the entire design.

PLINTH proposed a chapel built almost entirely from the stone excavated to make its own foundation. The floor was dug out; the stone that came up was cut, stacked, and set as the walls that now enclose the space. Almost nothing was trucked in — the building is, quite literally, made of the hole it sits in.

The single room is lit by one long slot where the stone wall stops short of the concrete roof plane, so a continuous line of light traces the whole perimeter and the heavy walls appear to float. As the sun moves, that line of light sweeps around the room like a slow clock.

It remains the studio's most-cited project, and the clearest statement of a principle PLINTH holds across every commission: build with what the site already gives you before you bring anything to it.