Commissioned by Dominique and John de Menil and completed in 1971, the Rothko Chapel brought together artist and place in a singular act of creation. Inside the irregular octagon, Mark Rothko placed fourteen canvases whose depth invites a meditation on consciousness itself. Outside, the grounds were drawn along an elemental axis: the brick sanctuary, a reflecting pool, and Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk, dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Together they form a site of gravity and openness.
The renewed campus vision seeks to restore and extend this clarity through the landscape. By removing what was not essential, the design reestablishes the dialogue between Chapel and Obelisk, while shaping the surrounding grounds into a sequence of shaded rooms and open lawns. Phase One included the restoration of the skylight, construction of the Suzanne Deal Booth Welcome House, and the transformation of the east campus into a new landscape of approach. Groves of river birch guide visitors away from the brightness of the city and Texas sun, preparing body and eye—first for the Obelisk, then the sanctuary, and finally Rothko’s paintings. Departing, visitors move through tree-filtered views and quiet thresholds before stepping back into daily life.
Phase Two extends this landscape vision. To the west of the Chapel, the Kathleen and Chuck Mullenweg Meditation Garden offers a contemplative grove where visitors may gather or pause in solitude. Across Sul Ross Street, the North Campus expands the Chapel’s civic role: a new shaded plaza will knit together the Administration and Archives Building, the Program Center, and the Guest House, extending the experience of the Chapel into a public ground for dialogue and community. These landscapes are designed as a counterpoint to the sanctuary—open-air rooms, gardens, and courts that invite reflection, gathering, and engagement while preserving the Chapel interior for stillness.
Lighting, planting, and circulation all reinforce this choreography. By day, layered shade and groves prepare visitors for the Chapel’s interior light; by evening, low illumination folds the campus gently into its neighborhood, while the Obelisk remains luminous, a still figure at the center. Stormwater systems, resilient planting, and raised grounds also prepare the site for the intensifying floods and storms of Houston’s climate.
Today the Rothko Chapel endures as one of the world’s first ecumenical sanctuaries, a place belonging to all faiths and to none. Guided by its dual vocation of contemplation and action, the renewed landscapes carry this mission outward, creating spaces that prepare, sustain, and inspire visitors while extending the Chapel’s call for reflection, justice, and shared humanity.
