Deeply Surreal Desert Chapel for Arizona’s Dutchman State Park

An intriguing blend of opposites, hard glass planes and serenely curved white walls mark a proposed chapel design by Arizona-based Urban Playground for Dutchman State Park in Phoenix, Arizona.

The church is a surreal structure set at the base of the appropriately named “Superstition Mountains” as if it has time-travelled right to the spot from a 1960s idea of the future.

How this intriguing structure is manufactured is a mystery.

While the curves suggest adobe, they are far too sleek and perfect to be handmade.

While lovely, the softness and perfection of this white material that curves up and around to a heavenly light source is incomprehensible.

The unchallenged blandness of the palette reflects the stifling vegetation of its desolate surroundings.

Sitting impassively in the hot and dry desert, removed from reality, this cool and detached church building has meeting places set about it.

In a strange way, the mystical and surrealistic shape brings together the spiritual and the natural in the desert.

The remoteness of the landscape provides an isolated environment perfect for contemplation and self-reflection.

In the deepest heart of the structure, the chapel itself suggests the intimate meeting place for a secret sect, hunted and hiding in the bleak and lonely desert.