During the Napoleonic Wars (1808-1814) part of the church and the sacristy were burned.

In the 19th century the temple was rebuilt and expanded with a new side chapel located to the south. During this period the new bell tower was also built as well as the rectory, which was a large building located next to the bell tower and connected to it by a raised bridge.

Amid the Spanish Civil War, specifically on July 21st, 1936, the church and rectory were looted and burned and from that moment on, the church was left badly damaged, roofless and abandoned.

In 2022, archaeological excavations were carried out that discovered the walls of the original church, as well as some tombs in the area.

At the beginning of the project, the church consisted of the central nave, a side chapel on the north side and the bell tower located in the southwest corner.

The central nave, 15 m long and 7’7 m wide, has stone block walls arranged in rows. It has a semicircular apse without windows or ornaments and a high altar paved with ceramic pieces. The front wall has the main door, which dates from 1824, and a high circular window. The building has been roofless since it was destroyed during the Civil War.

The side chapel is covered by a barrel vault and communicates with the central nave through a wide arch.

The bell tower is an empty square-based tower, 4 m on each side and about 15’7 m high, crowned with a hipped roof.

The aim of the project is to adapt the space to hold indoor cultural and religious events but maintaining its function as a public space open to the villagers.

The architectural proposal consists of three distinct interventions:

+Building structural consolidation
+Creation of a glass roof over the main nave
+Creation of a staircase inside the bell tower

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The floor slab is stepped to feel as though it is part of the land, encouraging occupants to engage with the site’s natural slope. Walls and floors are angled to frame views of the mountains, guiding movement through the house dynamically — open and expansive in shared areas, more intimate in private zones.

Large openings to the east capture cool summer breezes sweeping up the hill, while sliding screens provide control over wind, sun, shade, and privacy. A sheltered outdoor terrace doubles as the main circulation path, heightening awareness of the ever-changing weather and light. A generous opening to the north of the terrace allows winter sun to penetrate deep into the interior, warming the polished concrete slab through thermal mass. Glass sliding doors and screens offer flexibility to partition the house into distinct zones or open it entirely for gatherings. The layout separates everyday living areas from private spaces, with utility cores such as the pantry and bathrooms in between, creating an intricate weave of open pathways and quiet corners throughout the home.

The house acknowledges its connection to the site’s history, the neighbourhood, and the landscape — challenging conventional notions of dwelling through spatial play and delight.

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A large central void connects the different floors via a series of cross-laminated timber terraces. In this way, a sequence of communal spaces—both on and beneath the terraces—facilitates spontaneous interaction among users. The atrium acts as a large heat exchanger, enabling natural air exchange; roof vents allow for natural ventilation during the spring and summer months.

The program is organized around four vertical circulation cores and a series of corridors surrounding the atrium. The ground floor houses the most public spaces; the garden, first, and second floors contain all the classrooms; and the top floor is home to the faculty areas and faculty offices.

Structurally, the project employs a hybrid system consisting of a cast-in-place concrete grid structure and a series of prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) elements—staircases and vertical panels—that define the building’s interior. The industrialization of the process allowed work to proceed simultaneously on-site and in the workshop, shortening construction timelines. This duality is also evident on the façade, where the exterior wooden joinery is assembled onto the structure. The order of the structural grid is occasionally disrupted by the introduction of a series of composite-section Vierendeel beams, located on alternate floors, which free up column-free, more open spaces housing the main auditorium, the entrance lobby, and classrooms with movable partitions.

In addition to the large energy chimney, which forms the central atrium, a series of vertical elements are incorporated to house ventilation and air supply for the classrooms, avoiding horizontal ducts and the need for drop ceilings, with the mechanical systems and acoustic panels left exposed.

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The continuity and thickness of the envelope take advantage of the material’s thermal mass to moderate climatic fluctuations, delaying heat gain and generating more stable interior conditions. In this way, the material works in concert with the climate, reducing dependence on artificial systems while reinforcing an introspective mode of dwelling.

The morphology of the volume responds directly to the organisational scheme of the house. The elevated portion accommodates the children’s bedrooms on the first floor and, above them, the main bedroom on the second floor, the only room that engages the landscape from that height. At the opposite end of the volume are the service spaces and the elements that define the kitchen. Between these two poles unfolds the social core of the house.

A screen of perforated concrete blocks completes the system, filtering light, views, and ventilation. Rather than denying the exterior, it distances and mediates it, providing shade and privacy.

Thus, the material not only responds to environmental and structural imperatives, but also actively contributes to the construction of a domestic intimacy that stands in contrast to the idealised transparency of the surrounding landscape.

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The name “findling” holds a dual meaning in German: both “orphan” and “glacial erratic.” Architect Vincent Appel borrowed the term after a visiting philosopher friend identified the supporting stones as findlings. Literally, the home is built atop four such boulders, their mass holding the structure lightly above the land. Metaphorically, the term expresses a process of emotional restoration and rediscovery—an architectural effort intended to heal and reset the clients’ relationship to this site and to the act of building itself.

From the approach, the home appears to float just above the terrain. A slender stainless-steel stair—the project’s “third space”—descends from the structure, bridging the distance between forest floor and elevated platform. Doors and stairs typically provide the minimum articulation between inside and out; here, the stair is designed to expand that threshold into a heightened perceptual experience. Engineered through finite-element digital analysis, the stair is reduced to its thinnest possible expression, reading as neither of the earth nor of the building. Custom-perforated treads and a ribbon-like handrail introduce unfamiliar yet tactile cues, encouraging awareness that one is stepping from the familiar path in the woods into something intentionally other.

Rather than an exterior entry sequence terminating at a front door, visitors arrive directly into the center of the house, entering through its heart to communicate the feeling of an embrace. The plan is symmetrical yet varied in spatial experience. Two compact bedrooms and one bath occupy the corners—each with a large fixed window and operable wooden shutters—recalling the scale and spirit of a treehouse bunk. The central living and dining space expands outward with floor-to-ceiling glass, creating an alternating rhythm of compression and release inspired by regional mountaineering lodges and backcountry cabins.

Materially, the house is elemental and singular. The structure is built almost entirely from larch harvested from nearby forests, chosen for its durability, warmth, economy, and spiritual clarity. To minimize complexity and material footprint, windows are mulled directly into solid larch jambs and glazed on site. Portions of the wall pivot open for ventilation, eliminating the need for mechanical hardware or framed openings. Opening a window becomes not a technical mechanism but a physical gesture—an intimate act of participation with climate and landscape.

Half of the building rests on a historic New England stone wall likely constructed between 1770 and 1830 when the land was first cleared for farming. Now buried within the forest, these walls are quiet artifacts of regional history, tying the retreat into a continuum of habitation.

Throughout the interior, details are guided by restraint: the kitchen island is carved from a single block of Vermont Verde serpentine quarried in Barre, Vermont—the same quarry that supplied Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building planters. Its deep green veining was left unpolished to feel like a fragment of hillside drifted indoors. Door and shutter hardware fabricated by Ize reinterprets Le Corbusier’s La Tourette monastery handles, here cast in stainless steel to match the home’s material palette.

The Findling is both dwelling and transformation. Resting on ancient stones, lifted by the lightness of wood, and reached through a suspended metal passage, it is less an addition to the land than a rediscovery of it—an architecture designed to move perception from the subliminal to the supraliminal, inviting an emotional relationship with place.

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Simple timber-lined spaces provide the basics for living oriented toward the outdoors. A small open fireplace with a garden view offers reprieve from the coastal winds in one space. With a long foot-to-foot single-level bunk trimmed in tarnished brass in another room, colloquially referred to as the ship’s cabin.

Furnished with soft open-weave natural linens, woven surfaces, timbers, and a collection of books and found objects, the spaces speak to a calm beach holiday and are designed to actively combat the ever-present assault from the sand.

The bathrooms are approached with a rigour in simplicity, a direct response to the trials that beach house wet areas are put through. A heavy-gauge galvanised steel trough forming a deep vanity surrounded by a simple white porcelain tiles in one, and a shallow stainless steel wash plane cut into the textured mosaic tiles of the other.

This small building project slowly developed its own quiet, individual, and curious architectural language that appears throughout in subtle moments and details. It’s timber/ steel/ glass, come bushfire regulation inspired ( ehhe), window solution fronts a very raw, warm, and friendly place. It is a lovely project to have authored and one that will age and grow into its landscape in the years to come.

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After determining the function, we focused on three things when choosing the venue: first, mountains, buildings, and farmland landscape, all of which are horizontally spread out along the east-west direction of the Qu River, and we hoped that the venue would have the same qualities; second, the venue should be close to the farmland, which is naturally in line with the theme of food; and third, the venue should have existing buildings that could be transformed; Third, there shall be existing structures on site that may be renovated. Fortunately, we discovered a field walk parallel to the Qu River, with a derelict farm warehouse along the road. On the west side, the warehouse’s wall confronts the main arrival path, while on the south side, the Qu River waterfront is separated by woodland and a new town road. To the north lies a considerable expanse of farmland, over which the field road winds, with rolling hills visible on both sides.

The Warehouse – The reconfigured warehouse primarily serves indoor dining and meal preparation. However, it is also suitable for exhibitions, gatherings, resting, and seminars, with people coming and going in various settings. The building is a typical example of a field, embodying the memories of previously intensive farming labor. Therefore, we did not make many alterations to the overall shape, except adding a new main entrance; the other original holes and old doors and windows were also kept. The new metal roof, which eliminates the leaks in the original roof, is cantilevered outwards on the west side of the building, creating a grey space beneath the eaves that emphasizes the main entry.

The small house’s original roof was no longer functional, and the existing walls were too weak to sustain the new roofing system. To protect the walls from future damage, we installed a new steel and timber structural system on the outside of the ancient house’s facade, with columns gently removed from the existing walls to support the beams and roof independently. We kept the original roof beams to create a memory of the ancient walls without breaking their existing tie stability. The old external structural system visually connects with the long table regarding proportionality.

Because of the new apertures on the west side of the wall and the higher wall’s poor stability, new glued timber ring beams were added to hoop the upper half of the wall, increasing the overall strength of the old building. A natural rock about 2m5 in diameter was discovered near the riverbank in Tingtangxu Village and transported to the spot, where it was attached and stabilized with a slender tie rod to the overhanging beam.

18 – The warehouse is already there, and the long table adds the finishing touch. This 18-meter-long flat surface serves as a conduit for connecting with the local population along the 4-meter-wide field road. Continuing the restaurant’s purpose, the long table extends across the landscape, creating a more natural and public setting. The 18m length takes the scale experience to the extreme, hosting more anticipated gatherings and sharing on an anti-everyday scale. The slightly lower height also allows the long table to directly perceive the body, resulting in a large wooden surface for sitting and lying. Amid the vast site’s grass and trees, we hope this table will take on a new pose, possibly floating, gently caressing the earth it sits on, as if distinct from reality, moving between the mundane and the imaginative.

The consistent span of the construction of the long table space on the overall sense of aggregation has a more substantial impact on the suspension of the way to lessen this separation while also ensuring the continuity of the roof. The lightweight tie bar, if present, indirectly limits space while also occasionally assisting toddlers in climbing up and down. The enclosure and implicit divides above the long table shape how people use the table daily.

From 18 to 42 – To further formally, structurally, and experientially broaden the table’s borders, we stretched the 18-meter-long table to become a 42-meter-long public system. People can meet, picnic, sit, nap, swing, and admire the beauty here, and the field path transitions from a passing space to a place to remain, with more possibilities emerging as time goes on.

The wooden system on both sides of the long table complements the stability of the large-span steel structure in the center and meets the resting needs of villagers and visitors. The swing cloth hanging under the roof is an unexpected favorite, and the 42m public interface, like the shadow cast by the farmhouse in the field under the slanting sun, describes each other in detail. We connect and respond to the two structures at the main entrance to form an integrated expression. The farmhouse serves as an introduction that opens up the situation, which was here before we came. It eventually returns to its origins on the ground and carries the root of all logic.

Mountain & River – Environmental factors determine the overall roof form. As we consider the implicit geometric correspondence and the mimetic relationship between natural geography and artificial things, the long table along the road mirrors the unfolding of the water and mountains, attempting to connect and visualize the delights of the scenery here.

The roof of the promenade is sloped in a one-way profile: to the north, the mountains and fields are elevated to provide a view of the landscape; to the south, the gable end is depressed to block out visual clutter in the direction of the driveway; and to the west, it meets the direction of pedestrian arrival while creating a sense of serenity and peace within the site. The sloping roof follows the formal relationship of the sloping roof of the warehouse while at the same time slightly lowering its stance, implicitly acknowledging the subordination of its ‘furniture’ objects to the main ‘building.’ It is only then that we realize that the final appropriate scale of the project comes from the measurements drawn in the silence of the farmhouse so that we will be manageable and quiet.

While the warehouse’s roofing material was chosen for practical reasons, using a soft tarpaulin on the main body of the long table and the public gallery makes the roofing less solid. The roofing changes in response to the weather and time of day, morphing into a conversation with nature rather than a static landscape that stands alone. The roofing materials are less permanent, but this is quite rustic, retaining the impermanent and unpredictability of the original. The material will gradually age and even disintegrate with the dawn, sunset, and seasons, and the countryside’s texture reflects this natural turnover and non-permanence. The structural body of the steel and wood skeleton will last slightly longer, adding a layer of temporal dimension.

With People – In our view, the relationship between the Long Table and the local area should be more abstract than it requires deliberate interpretation, and it should be more concrete that it limits many possibilities. Especially as outsiders, our understanding of the local context is not profound. Creating a fixed-function, ostentatious intervention with an overly confident approach often results in presumptuous actions that are, in fact, irrelevant and offensive. We intend to leave a localized collective imaginary space, and it is ultimately up to the people to decide how it is filled and written. We have progressively shifted our focus from the extraordinary to the everyday. During the residency and later operation, some villagers expressed their excessive preference for the long table, even with a hint of defense; we were also pleased to see the residents come to the venue to use the extended table following their understanding and exciting interactions occurred one after the other. The relationship between the locals and the locals grew stronger.

With Time – Tingtangxu Village in the Long Table has a fertile field of thousands of miles. Although the water of the Qu River flows year-round, rice, rapeseed flowers, and other food crops are still cultivated in the spring and autumn cycles. Longyou’s rich grain and rice products are also rooted in the profound farming tradition here, which is still indispensable in daily abundance in our lives today. After the project was launched, we came and went to the site many times, during which the golden rapeseed flowers turned into green rice paddies. After the harvest, it was another scene. Other vegetation changed with the seasons and was very rich, and the long table interestingly reflected each other, making it a useful companion.

In the process of thinking about culture, geography, and daily life, we gradually began to reflect on how design can respond to the joint imagination of abstract and figurative, everyday and extraordinary, and then look forward to a discursive intervention to touch upon the topic of rural construction in the current context and to pull the trigger of more different groups of people and their co-operation. Time has become increasingly important in this process. The labor at dawn and the lights at sunset make the construction closer to materiality, rubbing marks of time.
Text provided by the architects.

Floor-to-ceiling, simply beautiful, double-leaf wooden windows allow light and warmth to fall on the seamless floor and also provide the necessary retreat in this urban context. Plants, hammocks, and furniture enliven the veranda architecture and lend the design lightness, homeliness, and comfort. Wooden separating elements between the verandas ensure privacy between the individual residential units. Outdoor curtains, with their fabric texture, give the private outdoor spaces a high recreational and residential value.

The heart of the outdoor space is formed by the two greenhouses with a well and sandbox. A large meadow stretches out next to them. Lushly planted flowerbeds punctually complete the overall picture. Along Wiesenstrasse, the street-typical planting is continued with a row of trees.

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