Church of Saint Michael the Archangel
Time, Matter and Light in a Contemporary Church
The intervention at the Church of San Miguel de Geneto, in San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Tenerife), is based on a dual commission: the rigorous restoration of an 18th-century hermitage and its extension through a new nave capable of responding to contemporary
liturgical needs without compromising the historical identity of the ensemble.
The original hermitage, built at the beginning of the 18th century along the former Candelaria road, embodies an austere and functional architecture closely linked to agricultural cycles and to the spiritual care of local inhabitants and travellers. Rectangular in plan and covered by a Mudéjar timber roof structure of par y nudillo, it represents a significant example of rural religious architecture in the Canary Islands. The intervention has fully restored this historic volume, recovering its timber coffered ceiling using traditional techniques and criteria of minimal intervention, while removing 20th-century additions that had distorted its typological reading, including the enclosure of the former entrance courtyard.
The extension is conceived as an autonomous body, clearly differentiated from the historic building. Between the two, a deambulatory is introduced as a space of transition and respect, allowing old and new to coexist without confusion. This intermediate strip is not only functional, but also acts as a temporal threshold, underlining the specific condition of each architectural layer and avoiding any formal mimicry.
The new volume is resolved through a continuous white envelope that simplifies and reinterprets the historic nave without reproducing it. Its scale and height remain deliberately subordinate to the hermitage, avoiding any gesture of protagonism. The neutrality of its architecture enables a serene coexistence with the historic fabric, understood not as contrast but as continuity over time. Inside, a large skylight introduces natural light directly over the presbytery, making light the primary spatial agent and the element that articulates the experience of the church.
One of the most significant gestures of the project emerged from a conflict during construction. A reinforced concrete wall, built to protect the courtyard from road traffic, was demolished following an administrative controversy. Rather than discarding its material memory, the wall was cut into sections and reused to form the altar, the ambo and the baptismal font. The reinforcing steel contained within the wall was also recovered and used to construct the cross of the reredos.
The material, broken and fragmented, thus acquires a sacramental condition, occupying the centre of the liturgy. This gesture is not intended to be narrative or symbolic in an explicit sense, but strictly constructive and material. The architecture accepts the conflict, incorporates the wound and transforms it into permanence. Concrete ceases to be an anonymous material and becomes condensed memory, matter traversed by time and re-signified through use. During the day, the architecture limits itself to allowing light to enter. Nothing more needs to be added. It is enough to remain attentive.
