The impressive engineering feat amazes the public while preserving a nearly 100-year-old church in the middle of a construction site.

The Chapel of Santa Lucia, inaugurated in 1922, has stood for almost 100 years in one of the main areas of the massive Brazilian city of São Paulo, just a block from the famous Avenida Paulista.

It still stands, and now it “floats”: its 1,200 tons can literally be seen suspended 31 meters in the air in the middle of a construction project that will transform into a sophisticated complex of a hotel, shopping center, and a 22-story tower designed by renowned French architect Jean Nouvel, winner of the 2008 Pritzker Prize and the mind behind the acclaimed design of the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.

The old chapel is part of the Matarazzo Hospital complex, and although there is now an empty space around it to be filled with the new structure, the chapel will not only be saved but also restored to regain its architectural splendor, which has faded over time. The original design of the chapel is by Italian architect Giovanni Battista Bianchi (1885-1942), the most prominent architect of São Paulo's Italian community. He arrived in the city in 1911 and chose to translate his name into Portuguese, becoming famous as João Bianchi.

The chapel will be fully restored—furniture, sacred images, the marble altar, pews, and kneelers—and the walls will be repainted.

The neoclassical facade in Siena yellow, which imitates marble, will also be restored using the ancient plaster technique from Italy’s Renaissance.