10 years after its completion, “Paper Church – Kobe” (1995) originally built after the Kobe earthquake 1995, was moved to a disaster-stricken area in Taiwan, and regenerated into a multipurpose church facility. The overall plan of the new building encircles a courtyard used for multiple events, and a circular chapel is placed to connect the office building and other church functions. To keep the former church’s atmosphere, the chapel is shaped like an upside down cone. This shape makes it possible to keep enough height and volume for the chapel, while still taking into consideration the relation with the low rise housings nearby. Inside this steel structured cone, is a membrane formed in a shape of a drum, allowing natural light to stream down like in the former church. Light from the glass strips on the exterior wall changes the expression on the membrane, visualizing the passing of time. Instead of using the paper tubes (30cm in diameter), which were the main structure in the church before, 5cm diameter tubes were used for the interior finish to absorb sound.
