Despite its remoteness we had a great view, courtesy of the big video screen that is nowadays standard at such events. With guests finally seated, Finch took to the stage and, following a quick welcome, began announcing the evening’s winners, category by category, between the various dinner courses. All in his usual prompt and punctilious fashion.

Some way in, I was surprised to find that, in a room of some 100+ tables and around 800 guests, we had randomly chosen a table upon which was seated one of the special category winners – for Small Projects. His palpable delight was a joy to witness and, after he had received his award, we greeted him following his long walk back to our table as a new-found hero.

More dining, more awards and then Finch finally brought the evening to its conclusion by announcing the WAF 2025 Building of the Year: The Holy Redeemer Church and Community Centre in Tenerife.

Noticing a small figure sat three away to my right slumped in shock, I realised that our table was also host to WAF’s overall winner, Fernando Menis. A man of great modesty, he hadn’t even told us that he was one of the finalists, and despite having seen the final jury presentations earlier that day, I hadn’t recognised him. But now, here he was, motionless and stunned in disbelief.

We helped Fernando to his feet and, to a fanfare of applause, he began his slow walk to the stage, to a myriad of flashing lights, and to a publicity machine that would ensure that within minutes his name and remarkable story would be transmitted far and wide around the world.

The Holy Redeemer Church, Las Chumberas, Tenerife (Photo: Simona Rota)

How fitting that, in this year of all years, a ‘building of faith’, and a pretty modest one in terms of scale, should win this most prestigious of all the architectural awards. I say that especially in the context of the conference theme this year being ‘Hearts and Minds’, about which Jeremy Melvin, in his inimitable style, had moderated a series of fascinating talks.

Small and modern chapels, such as the delightful building that Menis designed, have an extraordinary capacity to impact our senses. I well remember a visit to Le Corbusier’s Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut: arriving in the late afternoon we decided to enjoy the hospitality of nearby Ronchamp, delaying our pilgrimage until the following morning so that we could enter that sacred place with the rising sun’s light pouring through its east window. We were well rewarded. The sky was cloudless and blue, and the sun cast sharp shadows out-with, and streamed light within, to glorious effect.

A subsequent trip to Bagsvaerd Church near Copenhagen was also deeply moving, albeit in that case the architecture, produced by Jorn Utzon following his disgraceful experience over Sydney Opera House, was of a very different genre.

Another uncompromisingly modern yet equally powerful space, though of significantly larger scale, is Gottfried Böhm’s Pilgrimage Church at Neviges which I visited many years ago. There, again, the controlled effect of natural light within the interior produces an ambiance of very special character.

Gottfried Bohm: Pilgrimage Church, Neviges, Germany

And then, although back to the scale of chapel, there is of course that wonderful example of religious minimalism: Tadao Ando’s Church of the Light in Ibaraki where again natural light is used to the most extraordinary effect. That one’s high on my bucket list.

Tadao Ando’s Church of the Light in Ibaraki, Japan.

The amazing sense of the spiritual that Menis has magically captured does not, of course, necessarily demand the existence of a building: witness Milton Keynes Cathedral. Not all UK cities can afford cathedrals: Birmingham, the first British town to secure city status without one back in 1889, requisitioned the church of St Philip, particularly noted for its stunning stained-glass windows, in lieu of spending to build new.

But Milton Keynes went a step further when, in 1986, due to the prohibitive modern-day expense of commissioning the real thing, it opted for an architecture of ‘barks and leaves’, designed by Neil Higson, ‘The Tree Cathedral’ at Newlands, just east of the city. There, some 40 years later, the hornbeam and tall growing limes now clearly define the nave, evergreens represent the central tower and spires, and flowering cherry and apple trees form little and more intimate chapel spaces alongside. In springtime an array of colourful bulbs represent the sun shining onto the floor ‘within’ through the, of course, nonexistent stained-glass windows.

All enough to give that profound sense of the spiritual, of the hallowed, and of the timeless that has been so brilliantly captured by Menis in Tenerife.

Neil Higson’s Tree Cathedral in Milton Keynes.

The sacredness of such spaces seems to linger even long after churches have ceased to function: take for example that special little oasis of calm found in the garden of Christchurch Greyfriars just north of St Paul’s Cathedral. Wren’s fine church had ceased to function when, on 29 December 1940, the building was destroyed by the Luftwaffe during what became known as the Second Fire of London, but the sacrosanctity of that place lives on.

Christchurch Greyfriars

That sense of the sacred was almost lost in Liege following the systematic dismantling of the city’s Cathedral Notre-Dame et Saint Lambert during the anti-clerical wave of the Liege Revolution of 1789-91.

Cathedral Notre-Dame et Saint Lambert

Until recently, that is, when the municipality resurrected a hint of what once was, as gifted through an evocation of the church’s plan, and volume. This courtesy of the recent construction of metal lattice columns that re-define the nave of a building that once challenged Paris’s Notre-Dame in terms of magnificence. Despite the intervening desecration of the space through its use as the town’s market, an inkling of the spiritual again echoes…...

A modern palimpsest of Cathedral Notre-Dame et Saint Lambert

So, taking account of the very special and important role that buildings of faith have within our communities, witnessed especially by how long the spaces that they occupy, or occupied, remain hallowed, how fitting that during these most troubled of times, the WAF super-jury, should gift us The Holy Redeemer Church in that remote island of Tenerife as our ‘Building of the Year’.

The Holy Redeemer Church, Las Chumberas, Tenerife (Photo: Roland Halbe)