St. Mary Chapel / PLY+ Architects

Architects: PLY+ Architects
Area: 304 m² (3274 ft²)
Year: 2018
Photography: Adam Smith, Jeffrey Kilmer, Jason Keen
Project Team: Andrew Wolking, Masataka Yoshikawa, Yibo Jiao, Yusi Zha, Arvin Yu, Annabelle Guan, Jiashi Yu, Michie Nimsombun, Markus Boynton, Maggie Shao, Dinghao Zhou
Construction Manager: Granger Construction
Acoustics Consultant: Arcgeometer
Lighting Consultant: Illuminart
MEP Engineer: IMEG Corp.
Structural Engineer: SDI Structures
City: Livonia
Country: Michigan

St Mary Mercy hospital’s new chapel and spiritual spaces, designed by PLY+ Architects in Livonia, Michigan, include a Roman Catholic Chapel, a reflection room, and a Muslim prayer room, reflecting the area’s growing demographic and spiritual diversity. Completed in 2018, the design integrates smoothly with the existing hospital and highlights a significant cross on the hospital’s north façade. Key features include a rising chapel form, specific window orientations for natural light, a special dichroic glass installation, and intricately patterned brickwork. This project emphasizes creating a unified spiritual center.

Fostering a spiritual community has always been central to St Mary Mercy Hospital’s mission. The first building on the current campus was established in 1959 by the Felician Sisters to serve a rapidly growing community in urgent need of healthcare due to the booming auto industry. Since then, the region’s population has grown more diverse demographically and spiritually. Reflecting this, the project includes a Roman Catholic Chapel, a reflection room, and a Muslim prayer room.

The location for the new addition was determined during the initial conceptual phase and selected for its visual prominence from the north entrance. This placement allows the new chapel to visually “borrow” an existing cross on the north façade of the hospital. The formal approach to the project explores the potential for brick to achieve smoothness and definition, providing unity across various uses and expressing a spiritual center.

The chapel’s form starts low where it meets the existing hospital and rises to create a more vertically generous space, highlighting the addition’s importance. The chapel’s apertures align with programmatic needs, including a high east window for morning light during daily 6 am mass, a southern opening featuring dichroic glass that projects spectral colors into the space, and a western row of windows connecting with a future healing garden.

The dichroic window maximizes the color range by layering two glass “colors” and considering sun angles. The three primary liturgical elements—the tabernacle, altar, and ambo—complement the geometries of the conical brick corner, carved from solid dolomitic limestone using digital fabrication by Quarra Stone Company.

The conical corner geometry celebrates the tabernacle’s position, the most important liturgical element. Inside the chapel, the ceiling geometry strengthens the visual connection with the tabernacle, contrasting with the processional axis aligning with the stone-carved altar. Externally, this corner is accentuated by intricate brickwork.

The brick coursing rotates masonry in a clockwise direction from a running bond pattern to a rotating pattern and back, creating a “woven” pattern at the corner. The following course rotates counter-clockwise, reinforcing this woven design. Iron-spot brick was chosen to distinguish the chapel from the existing hospital and for its reflective qualities, appearing dynamic as light interacts with the facade.