Luce Memorial Chapel

The Luce Memorial Chapel sits in the middle of the Tunghai University campus on the western edge of the city. It is a single structural shell of curved concrete, low at the front and rising to a pointed apex thirty metres above the rear. The interior is correspondingly dramatic, with a single triangular window of stained glass above the altar.

The chapel and the wider campus are both worth a walk. Tunghai is one of the oldest universities in Taiwan and the campus is unusually green and open. The agricultural milk and ice cream from the dairy on campus are a Taichung institution. About thirty minutes by bus from central Taichung.

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The architect was I. M. Pei, the same architect of the Louvre pyramid, and this small chapel — built in 1963 for Tunghai University — was one of his first independent commissions. It is a single concrete shell folded into four hyperbolic paraboloids that meet at a knife edge at the top, like a tent held up by the wind.

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