San Diego, California, USA
San Diego-based architectural firm Carrier Johnson + CULTURE completes the Lyle and Grace Prescott Memorial Prayer Chapel on behalf of Point Loma Nazarene University in order to replace an older structure creating a new peaceful setting for prayer and spiritual reflection.
This Christian evangelical university sits on a lush campus overlooking the Pacific from arresting cliff formations.
The university’s Prayer Chapel replaces the historic campus chapel, which had aged beyond repair, and provides a new, intimate facility for worship and solitary personal reflection and prayer.
The site’s prominent location ensures that the chapel will be a longstanding physical reminder of the university’s guiding values and the role of prayer as an anchor for the community.
The chapel design for the university evolves from two inspirations: its serene natural setting, and the spiritual significance of the structure’s role as a spiritual and academic anchor for the campus.
Its design has been awarded a 2021 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Simple, pure lines and forms help embody the true essence of a chapel’s purpose. The number three is evoked throughout the design, as a symbolic reference to the Holy Trinity.
For example, the distance from the entrance to the cross at the far end of the nave is 33 feet, and a tripartite window arrangement with floor-to-ceiling glass installed in angled recesses sits opposite three personal prayer niches.
From the outside, equal importance is placed on the approach to the building as much as on the chapel form itself.
The massing forms abstractly offer a pair of open arms in an inviting embrace.
The entry plays with scale, compressing, and then opening up to enhance the connection and progression from exterior to interior.
The volume opens to enhance the sense of arrival in the main sanctuary space, expressed in concrete, wood, and glass.
Overhead, a light canopy of native wood and wicker, perhaps suggesting a cocoon, hangs in the space — a gesture evoking the lifting of the spirit and, more subtly, Christ’s crown of thorns.
Afternoon sunlight penetrating the tripartite windows illuminates the canopy and the cross at the far end of the nave.
Organic materials continue the theme of embrace, while concrete conveys a sense of permanence, earthly presence, and strength.
Three personal prayer niches radiate from the center of the sanctuary, with separations of slatted wood offering privacy while allowing natural daylight to penetrate — a reminder to some of the presence of the divine.
Outside, an intimate prayer garden with sculpted hedges is enhanced by several freestanding stained-glass panels, preserved from the historic chapel.
The panels filter the sun as it follows its arc, producing vivid colors in sacred patterns throughout the garden — inspiration in light.
Project: Lyle and Grace Prescott Memorial Prayer Chapel, Point Loma Nazarene University
Architects: Carrier Johnson + CULTURE
Client: Point Loma Nazarene University
General Contractor: Bycor
Photographer: Lawrence Anderson, Lawrence Anderson Photography
