At the St. Mary Mercy Livonia medical campus in Livonia, Michigan, people are in need of miracles every single day. Whether it’s their own health at risk or that of a loved one, there comes a moment when everyone here realizes that something special has to happen for things to change. For over 40 years, the place where patients and their families went to find peace in those difficult moments was the old chapel. Today, that chapel has been beautifully recreated and serves as a calming space for people of all faiths to find inner peace.

In November of 2017, St. Mary Mercy Livonia began construction of a new, 2,600-square-foot chapel ? one that would not only serve the same purpose as the old one, but also cater to the needs of the broader religious community that used the hospital. After all, St. Mary is a Catholic hospital, but the new chapel also provides spaces of worship for Protestants and non-Christian Abrahamic worshippers.
To create this blend of faiths within a single space, the chapel had to be given an irregular shape. Indeed, it does not have the symmetry of a conventional chapel from the outside, but an organic form that’s simultaneously subtle and expressive. The curves of the north elevation are formed by an intricate pattern of brickwork.

On the inside, the walls do not entirely follow the footprint of the plan, which makes for even more odd spaces and peculiar relationships between rooms. The architects behind the redesign...