Futuna Chapel

New Zealand's most awarded building is a tiny chapel in suburban Karori that most Wellingtonians have never heard of.

Futuna Chapel was designed in nineteen fifty-eight by architect John Scott and completed in nineteen sixty-one. It fuses modernist architecture with the structural language of the Maori wharenui — a central timber post, rib-like rafters, low eaves — combined with the influence of Le Corbusier's raw concrete work. The result is something that feels simultaneously ancient and radical. Light enters through narrow slits and coloured glass, falling across rough concrete and warm timber in a way that changes through the day.

The building was constructed by the Society of Mary brothers themselves. The only sub-contractor was an electrician. Monks, building a chapel, by hand, in Karori. It won the NZIA Gold Medal in nineteen sixty-eight and the Twenty-Five Year Award in nineteen eighty-six — the two highest honours in New Zealand architecture.

In two thousand, the Society of Mary sold the property. The surrounding buildings were demolished for housing. The chapel was only saved because it was protected by the Wellington District Plan. For years it sat abandoned and deteriorating, surrounded by new townhouses. The Friends of Futuna Trust acquired it in two thousand and six and have been restoring it since.

During the years of neglect, a wooden Crucifixion sculpture by artist Jim Allen went missing from the chapel. In twenty-twelve, it was found on a farm in Taranaki. Nobody has ever explained how it got there. It was restored and reinstalled in twenty-thirteen.

If you visit — and you should — you'll find it on a quiet residential street. There's no sign announcing it as anything special. It looks, from the outside, like a modest community hall. Step inside and it's one of the most powerful spaces in the country.