Though visible from afar, the actual purpose of this erratic sand-coloured block rising up twelve metres out of a field near Wachendorf in Germany is not immediately obvious. Sometimes mistaken for a defensive tower, a silo or a campanile, the Field Chapel evokes an air of remarkable and awe-inspiring individuality combined with a sense of proportional harmony with the surrounding green and meandering landscape. Standing on Hermann-Josef Scheidtweiler’s farmland near this village with a population of roughly five hundred people, Peter Zumthor’s latest creation is dedicated to Saint Nicholas von Flüe (1417–1487), also referred to as Brother Klaus, who was a peacemaker, mystic and hermit in the Swiss mountains.