Gaudi’s first work outside Spain will be a chapel in Chile

Nearly 100 years after Antoni Gaudí’s death, Chile will begin constructing a chapel using his original designs for the rear section of Sagrada Família’s apse, Dezeen reports.

Slated for completion in 2017, the chapel in Chile will be the Spanish architect’s first building outside of his home country. The chapel is also expected to be completed before La Sagrada Família, one of Gaudí’s most iconic works yet to be completed.

According to Fast Company, the chapel will be named Our Lady of the Angels Chapel, and will be located in the city of Rancagua, 50 miles south of Santiago. Construction will be overseen by project architect Christian Matzner, and will cost $7 million in government funding.

The 98-foot-tall structure will be adorned with 20 oculi carved from stone in Barcelona. Lapis lazuli mined in Chile will cover the main tower, topped with a copper cross. A crypt will house the remains of friar Angélico Aranda, who wrote Gaudí a letter in 1922 asking him to design a chapel for Rancagua.

“I wish to build something original–very original–and I thought of you,” Aranda wrote in his letter, adding that he wants designs for a chapel “only as you know how to do.”