Maria Verstappen, the widow of Hubert Le Paige, was the last heir to the Le Paige castle estate in Herentals. Following her death in 1976, her estate was bequeathed to the Church Council of Our Lady, with the explicit instruction to build a new church to replace the old one. Four decades later, that wish was surprisingly fulfilled through an Open Call. TEd’A and Gafpa redefine the contemporary church, not as an imposing structure but as a place for meeting and gathering, thereby returning to the original meaning of the word ‘iglesia’.

The site is situated on the outskirts of Herentals, where traces of the bastioned fortifications are still visible in the undulating landscape of the romantic castle grounds. The new church is tucked into the hollow of a vanished bastion and engages with the history of the site. As part of the unique construction process, a vanished defensive mound was temporarily reconstructed. The earth mound served as a natural formwork onto which a solid concrete volume was poured. Only after the concrete had set and the earth had been excavated did the hollowed-out space reveal itself to be an artificial cave.