Continuing a nearly thousand-year-old local ecclesiastic history, and responding to the 2016 architectural competition for a new church building for the very active congregation in Ulsteinvik, my project establishes a connection between the church and the other cornerstone of this coastal community, namely the shipyard industry, lending the church a stronger presence in everyday life. Examining the structural properties of ships, I find the steel skin and its supporting decks and bulkhead to resonate very well with my programme of different functions supporting the religious services in the church. The building design consists of ship assembly-line modules, creating a confined, sacred space, while at the same time exposing the many activities of the congregation to the outside. To like ships is first and foremost to like a house, a superlative one since it is unremittingly closed, and not at all vague sailings into the unknown: a ship is a habitat before being a means of transport. Roland Barthes