In Italy, in the six decades following the end of the Second World War, before and after the Second Vatican Council, they were built in the shortest time allowed by technology and that the situation required then, an extraordinarily high number of new churches. The reasons that explain such a vast and rapid construction will that, I believe, is unprecedented in other historical epochs, are several: the enormous warlike destructions, recurrent earthquakes (Belize, Friuli, Irpinia, Umbria, Marche, Abruzzo), the remarkable demographic growth, the rapid and deep economic and social transformations that the country has gone through and that have caused an intense and generalized process of urbanization, etc. In the space of sixty years, agrarian Italy has become an industrial country, and later, a post-industrial one. The exact number of churches built in Italy during the second half of the 20th century is not known; the experts estimate that it can oscillate around five thousand. It is a frankly high number, which corresponds to a will equally decided from the project, pastoral and economic point of view.
The unprecedented history of the church of Holy Virgin Mary, in Silver Lake, is simultaneously a scathing story of the Angelenos. It could also be a perfect illustration of Jean Baudrillard's famous critique of representation. The church was originally designed as the setting for a free adaptation of Leon Tolstoy's novel 'The Cossacks', in the first Hollywood, a dubious choice to represent the culture and architectural context of the Terek Cossacks, where the action was developed of the homonymous novel. Once reconstructed as a permanent structure, it became a simulation without original: the simulation of a previous simulation. However, immediately after its construction in 1928, the church became a place of worship much loved by Russian emigrants in Hollywood, and in one of the favorite shrines of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad in general. This fact raises a series of difficult questions to resolve, such as the comparison between authenticity and simulation, permanence vs. temporality, or structural honesty versus pastiche. This article argues that the representative aspects of architecture are especially valued by its users in moments of great social cataclysms that threaten the very foundations of their identity.
Within representational spaces, complex symbolism and generally related to the clandestine side of life, we propose a sub-classification: the third space or "Nepantla", which applies to the culture of Mexican immigrants in the US and their descendants popularly called Chicanos. They generate this new space from the feeling of "being in the middle of", as a cultural union between Anglos, Mexicans and indigenous people. "Nepantla" is considered a transitional phase that begins simply with the language. The postmodern paradigm then refers to the creation of a New Medium, a rehabilitation from the colonial occupation for its psychological survival. One of the strategies of cultural consolidation is precisely the process of transculturation and transfer of values, summarized in a different culture that reflects the ambiguity of miscegenation. Once the tensions of Nepantla are understood and confronted, the native Being / I recovers, and Nepantla becomes a psychological, spiritual and political space, where the Chicanos find meaning to their culture by recovering the ancestral. It is as well as the religious space goes from the corporal artistic manifestations, until the materialization of traditional altarcitos in the houses and extends until the urban scale, in the cult to the dead ones and the catholic rites in the streets, imbued of catholic and pagan imaginary who live harmoniously and are the motive of massive congregations. We have to analyze, then, the religious expressions of Chicanos as an essential part of their social reality in the city of Los Angeles, exposed in all possible scales, which by their own restrictive colonial origins do not require a container building, but are sustained in pure faith.
It is evident that the present temple, like that generated throughout history, must respond to the man it tries to serve, to its experience of faith and its expression of communion with God and men. In this sense, the consideration of the spiritual, liturgical, religious and sociocultural situation of each historical moment makes the temple manifest meanings that reproduce a concrete way of understanding, living and expressing the faith of man, in addition to those associated with the expression itself architectural of each moment. Fixing our attention in the contemporary era, the temple is determined by specific theological conceptions and categories that underlie it. This analysis should go beyond the levels of mere technical or artistic quality to reach the deep meanings that the present moment presents to us, the way in which we transform them and the values we want to bequeath to future believers. Therefore, it is necessary to draw up an explanation, reflection and relationship between different liturgical, architectural, anthropological and pastoral aspects that arise from the analysis and study of what is constituted as the identity of contemporary religious architecture based on theological principles who are behind them and who motivate them.
During the period between 1945 and 1990, in the times of the single-party repressive communist system of the former Yugoslavia, the construction of new churches that should have fulfilled the demands of the Serbian Orthodox Church was systematically hindered and obstructed. The Communist authorities, widely known for their atheism, showed no understanding for the feelings of millions of Orthodox Christians in the multinational state, simultaneously expressing their fear of the social influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The communist authorities of the former Yugoslavia, continually expressing their fear of Serbian national feelings, in addition to the decline of their own ideological influence, treated the construction of new churches as a great danger to the system of pseudo-egalitarian social relations. On the other hand, thanks to the Serbian emigrant patriots and their traditional and warm feelings towards their country, the construction of new churches continued in some areas of the former Yugoslavia. However, larger and more ambitious projects were carried out abroad, especially in those countries with a large Serbian diaspora, such as the USA, Canada and Australia.
With its structure, the Bubanj chapel simultaneously initiates the reflection on the permanence and changes in the architecture of the Orthodox world. His architect asked himself whether the church should be covered in gold, with large walls and pillars made of precious stones-or of an imitation, as is usually the case-or should it emphasize the simplicity and modesty of Christ. The Bubanj chapel directly indicates that the believer should observe the world through the eyes of the spirit, something insisted on by the aesthetics of Byzantine ecclesiastical art invoked by many, but usually only when some of the special qualities of the Church are indicated. orthodox, and at the same time, ignoring the laws of nature (human), in addition to the true messages and lessons of the Fathers of the Church. The concept of the chapel near Nis offers a possible answer to the question of whether the sacred architecture is exclusively a question of spirituality, that is: how to represent a sacred event as the key moment of the intimate belief (in community). At that point, the idea of Sasa Budjevac represents so far a unique expression - in terms of design - of the future Christian churches, both on Earth and on the Moon or on other planets, such as Mars, where, according to the teaching of the Church, also reigns God Kosmokrator.
Contrary to what happens in the western world, where we witness many conversions of places of worship in places for profane uses, the countries that left atheist communism after 1989 are characterized by a fever of religious constructions that intensify towards the this, in the post-Soviet space. Romania is, in a way, exemplary, because from rural parishes and neighborhood churches to large buildings (such as cathedrals of metropolitan or archbishop's headquarters), all its territory is covered with new churches that will last a long time, although only be thanks to the materials used. The traditional oscillation between synchrony with the West and protochronism necessarily demands solutions, because the initial fervor ends up giving way to anguish when the materializations of pious fervor are known (including the results of the contests for the new diocesan cathedrals). There are many architectural proposals that seem to be even worse than the nineteenth-century genre called Saint-Sulpice. The country is atypical, because it does not seem to have - for now - a degree of diversity (in the recent sense, not the usual one) comparable to other countries, which helps to see certain problems better. Therefore, even though Romania is characterized by a great multi-denominationality and an open ecumenical attitude - magnificently illustrated by Mircea Eliade - statistically, the majority of the population belongs to the Orthodox Byzantine rite, and the idea of a new National Cathedral or of the Nation has revived. This idea - associated with the time of the birth of the national state and some notable episodes - dates from the interwar period, when the issue of the transposition of small traditional buildings on a larger scale had already been established.
On December 2, 1978, in a letter to the Hungarian bishops, John Paul II wrote the following: "The Catholic Church, which has always played a significant role in the history of Hungary, will continue to shape the spiritual image of your country, carrying to your sons and daughters the light of the Gospel of Christ that has illuminated the path and the vital inclinations of the Hungarian people for many centuries ». The millenarian Hungarian Christendom has played a dominant role in the movement of liturgical reform: the 34th International Eucharistic Congress was held in 1938 in Budapest. The Hungarian Catholic Church made significant constructions in the first third of the 20th century. The modernist works, developed in the most advanced style of the time, showed the greatness of the Church and the role it played in the social life of Hungary between the two world wars, following the most up-to-date principles of architecture and liturgy. Various churches were built according to the interpretation of the traditions of the first Christianity, which showed the progressive liturgical principles and the new dispositions of the architectural function, all this long before the Second Vatican Council. After 1945, church building in Hungary was delayed for a long time because of political realignment. During socialism, only churches could be built to replace other demolished, or in some cases fortunate, new temples were built to represent the conformity of state power. Forty years of ideological oppression continued, but the singular architectural memory of that time has stood out for its expressiveness. From the 90s there was a boom in construction that carried the marks of a crisis of values due to the uncertainty caused by the forced break. Only a decade later a recovered production of architectural value was perceived, consisting of a reinterpretation of truncated development. In the case of contemporary Hungarian churches, the commitment to architectural value has consisted in the continuity of tradition alongside the aesthetic demands of the millennium. This tradition is closely linked in its identity to a clear conception of the liturgical spaces and to the redefinition of the approach to the Christian space at the turn of the millennium. After an ideologically dark era, dedicating the oppression to a time of preparation, the phase of continuity is reinterpreted.
In the early twentieth century, Ireland is liberating four centuries of English rule. This process, formally initiated in the previous century, more precisely from 1829, with the Act of Emancipation, provides the Irish Catholic Church with greater self-confidence regarding the external manifestation of its newly recovered freedom, at the same time that in the following decades, already on the way to the new century, it is becoming economically more powerful and begins to deploy a new energy in an impressive program of church building, mainly of great capacity and in urban areas. On the other hand, many Irish priests begin to form outside of Ireland, and others begin to travel more often, so that when they return to their country they bring with them ideas to meet the needs of the Irish Church, applying them without reflecting on the lost tradition. . From this crossroads emerge the two main currents: Neo-Gothic and Neoclassicism, to which the Hiberno-Romanesque is then superimposed. In parallel appear some attempts to build churches linked to modern trends prevailing in Europe, and that will not really get underway until the 50s of the twentieth century. Within this context, the present communication will try to answer the following questions: Do the Neo-Gothic and the Neoclassical satisfy the desire for Irish national affirmation through ecclesial architecture? What factors or circumstances trigger the emergence of the Hiberno-Romanesque style? What distinguishing characteristics mark this style? What validity does Hiberno-Romanesque achieve as an Irish national style in ecclesiastical architecture? Within this state of affairs, when can one speak fully of a modern ecclesial architecture in Ireland? What is the response of Irish ecclesiastical architecture to the new liturgical approach of the Second Vatican Council?
This work will investigate the concepts and strategies developed by Richard Neutra around religious architecture and the recovery of these as a proposal for the 21st century. In all periods, cultural variations, political convulsions and economic crises have led to the reconsideration of traditional forms of worship and worship. In his six religious projects planned and built between 1957 and 1968 (the Riviera, Claremont, Garden Grove and St. Andrew churches, the Miramar military chapel and the Congregational church-school), Richard Neutra suggested architectural solutions that not only embraced the values modern but also followed the traditions and dogmas of the Christian community. In 1960, the Madrid magazine Informes de la Construcción published an article written by the same Neutra entitled "What aspect should a church have?" In that article, Neutra highlights three fundamental keys to project religious architecture that connects theology, the Christian practice and the current secular culture. These three keys include the absolute integration of architecture and its natural and physical environment; the pre-eminence of the inspired word; and the deep understanding of the ways in which the human being performs the act of worship. In addition to the previously mentioned article, this work will discover other fundamental documents of Neutra, both published and not, such as «Science and religion through the experience of an architect», «Churches that fit into Creation», «Church and religion "and" Project an interior-exterior church "(UCLA). These articles will be used to highlight the depth of Neutra's thinking on the appropriate form of religious architecture. Finally, the religious architecture of Richard Neutra will be proposed as a model for the architects of the 21st century to face the current division between postmodern life and traditional Christian worship.
The episcopate years of Father Michele Pellegrino "delivered" a large number of religious complexes to the city of Turin and its surroundings. The bishop participated as an advisor and expert in religious building strategies at the Second Vatican Council, and tried to mediate between the reformist impulse of the Council and the social and cultural changes that characterized the 60s and 70s in Italy. In the city of Turin, from 1965 to 1977 twenty-two parish churches were built, all located in the industrialized periphery, where they were most urgently needed; they were very different from the usual religious architecture, rising between rows of tall buildings and without cult elements preserved to characterize them. The urban situation of Turin determined not only the peripheral location of the newly built churches, but also their high number, as well as the emergency planning that characterized that architectural model of cult buildings. The "religious equipment" were some of the social services considered indispensable in the new residential areas. In the peripheral areas, the absence of a church meant that there was nothing to promote social aggregation, especially that needed by the population that came from the south of Italy, and also meant a drastic reduction in religious practice. The parish centers had to respond to the urgent needs of the area, lending themselves to many uses throughout the week, except on Sundays, when they only acted as a church. For this reason, the morphology of the cult building became secondary, and technological innovation and prefabrication helped to build churches quickly. This unknown history of a construction process that was repeated for more than twenty times in the periphery of Turin was matched well with the reform of the ecclesiastical liturgy and the secular world. The church was no longer a monument, but the House between the houses of the Christian community; "Poor" among the poor.
The Labour Universities form a unique group in the history of Spanish architecture in the twentieth century due to the political and social circumstances in which they arose. Following Falangist ideological principles and those of National Catholicism, the existence of a space dedicated to worship was considered essential as a complement to the teaching function in the pedagogical and architectural design of the new centres. The programmatic needs demanded by these centres required an architectural response that had hitherto been non-existent and difficult to resolve with previous methodologies. The first attempts to provide the Labour Universities with an appropriate formal and functional expression offered a clear confrontation between classicism and modernity, with the figure of Luis Moya as an anti-modern crusader whose proposals would materialise as a model of the ideal city - linked to Civitas Dei - where the chapel became the capital and articulating element of the whole. With the competitions for the construction of new Labour Universities held from 1960 onwards, modern architecture will feel the definitive push, establishing itself as the only possible solution to tackle the project. These "machines for learning" will be proposals formulated at the time of the recovery of modernity in our country, by architects whose craft offers guarantees of more than correct solutions. The review and analysis of their chapels allows us to understand how a similar religious programme would become a sacred space through the introduction of linguistic, vernacular and symbolic aspects into the project, thus evolving and enriching modern Spanish architecture in the second half of the twentieth century.
Architecture as cosmogonic and religious art. The sacred space. Architecture has a sacred function, as a generator of a new cosmos in response to human distress; space created to conjure the horror vacui before the cosmos and put order in a chaos full of evil spirits. All space is sacred; any place is valid to communicate with the Divine. But there are places where it is easier for us to get in touch with the Mystery; natural spaces or created by humans and legitimized by tradition: altars, temples and shrines, places for worship, prayer and retreat. The sacred spaces in Christianity and other religions. a) Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches. The Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, although born of the common Christian trunk, are different. Their different theological conceptions led to different conceptions of the liturgy that condition their temples: presbytery with altar and ambo, and place for the Eucharistic reservation in Catholicism; sanctuary, iconostasis ... in orthodoxy; the place for the Word and the chorus in the Protestants. b) The sacred space in other religions. Fundamental characteristics for the worship and prayer of other religions: Muslim mosques (courtyards, mihrab, iwanes, sources, texts of the Koran); Jewish synagogues (tabernacle, teba with amud and menorah); stupas and Hindu and Buddhist pagodas (burial mounds with relics, structures that represent the Buddhist cosmos); sanctuaries shinto (with his torii). Sacred ecumenical and interreligious spaces. In the secular city we need to continue building sacred spaces; particularly ecumenical and interreligious spaces, due to the great importance of the migratory process and of cultural and religious intercommunication. a) We need not only Christian ecumenical-interdenominational spaces, but also interreligious spaces, which take into account the fundamental characteristics of the pointed religious spaces. Especially in public transit centers for different religions and cultures (hospitals, airports). Three examples: the multi-faith chapels of the Bretonneau and Trousseau hospitals (Paris) and the Texas Children's Hospital (Houston). Three magnificent ideas already carried out. They have the handicap of being centered on monotheistic religions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity), although open to all, do not contemplate in an equally express way the reality of Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism).
It can be said that death is the only certainty with which the human being counts, nothing is more inevitable and universal: from the moment of our birth we are inescapably destined to stop being, therefore, reflecting on this is not rather than face perhaps the only true. It is the current architectural consequences derived from the above that raises this communication. From the perspective of today's materialistic and desacralized society, which has lost the close relationship that architecture has always maintained with death. Do not forget that most of the monuments of antiquity that have been preserved so far are of a funerary nature. However, nowadays the funeral spaces are heading towards indifference and towards abandonment, a result of the fact that nowadays not only death is concealed and silenced, but it has become the new social taboo. A feature of the twentieth century, especially from the second decade, is the lack of interest on the part of the architects, towards the cemetery and towards the graves, understood the first as sacred space and funeral place par excellence and the second as tangible evidence of human death The Modern Movement contributed to the expressed, focusing its interest on housing and the "city of the living", considering the architecture of death as a matter of minor importance, typical of previous centuries. This communication aims to rescue from oblivion and make a brief review of the most significant examples, the exceptions, of this architecture, showing examples of Asplund, Aalto, Scarpa, Rossi, Portela, Mirallés or Chipperfield. At the same time, a reflection on the future of these spaces of death and memory is proposed.
At the end of the sixties, the inflatable structures aroused an extraordinary interest, in particular, for their possible applications in the field of architectural creation, including religious architecture. Driven by his passion for this constructive system, the German-born architect Hans-Walter Müller paid for the creation of a "gonflable" church for the French municipality of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles. Despite its ephemeral lifespan, reduced to a single summer weekend, the project gave much to talk about in France. The installation of a place for the cult, in which its construction and disappearance had to be developed in a short space of time, turned this episode into a singular event. In fact, inflatable structures have characteristics that place them at the antipodes of traditional construction: stable, heavy, solid and perennial. Prolonging the spirit of kinetic art, to which Müller was closely linked, this realization allowed him to put into practice the research about the nomadic architecture, light and easy to install, which he had been developing since 1963. The communication will specify the objectives that guided the construction of the church of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles, as well as its execution process, the reactions of its users and the issue of immateriality. Likewise, the importance that this realization acquired in the difficult classifiable trajectory of its author will be analyzed.
In this paper we will present the principles, foundations and bases of the Cistercian ideal with its architectural materialization, of great simplicity and asceticism, both in its genesis in the 12th century and now at the beginning of the new millennium. A Cistercian monastery is understood as a place full of ideals and spirituality, where God is sought. The Cistercian monastery is thus an ideal that has a representation and materialization that, with the passing centuries, underwent some transformations and adaptations. It will be the objective of this work to make a parallel between the austere architecture of the Cîteaux of the 12th century, the plan ad quadratum of the churches and all the influence of the apparent plan-type of its monasteries, in the architecture of the following centuries. A connection will be made between all these principles and the recent rehabilitation of an old farm in present-day Czech Republic. The architect was the minimalist John Pawson and the farm is currently the Monastery of Novy Dvur, the first Cistercian monastery of post-communism in the Czech Republic. There are questions for which an answer will be sought. What were the Cistercian architectural ideals and how did they materialize over the centuries? How was the Cistercian spirituality understood from the Apology of Saint Bernard until our days? What were the Cistercian ideals and reality in its genesis of the twelfth century and what was its legacy? And in our days, how are the Cistercian ideals materialized? That is, how is it possible that this spirituality has an architectural materialization and that it continues to influence contemporary architects, not only in their work but also instigating them to create an architecture full of spirituality as is the case of the Novy Dvur Monastery? That is, from the Cîteaux of the 12th century until the minimum of the 21st century.
The church of the Sagrada Familia, designed by Ludovico Quaroni together with Adolfo De Carlo, Andrea Mor and Angelo Sibilla in 1956, and built in 1958/59, is a paradigm of the way of conceiving the cult building by Quaroni: building at the service of the souls and the neighborhood; sacred and civil monument, not rhetorical. Precisely the very close relationship between the building and the neighborhood, is an important factor of innovation in the sacred architecture of the moment. Through this logic of urban insertion, Quaroni succeeds in achieving a perfect identification between the building and the neighborhood, between the building and the city, in continuity with which the church is located. Identity that, in the project, is also found between the function, the form and the meaning of the building: between the contents and the continent, in all the scales. The project, in fact, clearly demonstrates Quaroni's unitary conception of architecture and project, oriented towards the construction of a structure in which the components of the vitrubian triad were "not only included, but necessarily fused, integrated and dissolved. in the resulting architecture ", directed towards" a single representative and solid idea, that impacts, that is captivating and that is born practically -in appearance- of the internal logic and the interpretation of the place, elaborated enough to become elegant, excellent, very refined ». Unfortunately, the building has been carried out incompletely and, as such, has not materialized the idea of the project, neither in its integration in the neighborhood, nor in its relation between form, function and meaning. By not perceiving it as a work of art, or as a sacred place, its users have modified it over the years to adapt it to the demands that had arisen, without due attention to architecture, with a progressive loss of readability. the same. The intervention of architectural restoration and planned liturgical adaptation -projected by me- is in the process of partial realization, and has the objective of making possible (as it happened in the Quaroni project) the unity of the different components of architecture, so that this church can finally fully express itself, inside and out, as a church here and now.
In this work the relevance of the architectural space of Van der Laan for the s. XXI. Most writings on Van der Laan are based on his three main publications or accomplishments. This research is based on primary sources, such as unpublished letters, design sketches and lectures. By this means, the underlying motives and interconnections between the Benedictine background of Van der Laan and the theory of architecture can be revealed. From his Catholic and Benedictine formation, which in the case of Van der Laan was strongly deployed around the act of doing, he developed a universal philosophical construction of the archetypal space: Architectonic Space. The analysis for this paper focuses on its objective of making space intelligible (sacred), where the system of proportions is seen only as part of a process of knowledge that balances the senses and the intellect. The concepts Van der Laan focused on were radically different from the current modern trend and the traditionalist tendencies followed by his contemporaries. Our goal is to go beyond the considerations of the twentieth century of structure and function, to go back to the thought of the late nineteenth century on the surface and ornamentation, which gave rise to the phenomenology of space. Other spatial concepts, which do not point to a radical break, but based on the concepts of surface and ornamentation, were also at stake. Architectonic Space incorporates several interpretations of these spatial concepts that were rethought, namely: the incorporation of the experience of the subject together with the perception, the movement of the mass in space; the rethinking of the surface and the ornamentation, the incorporation of time and movement in space, the materiality of the architecture, or its physical appearance. These topics are considered relevant in the theory of contemporary architecture, with the aim of understanding the work of architects such as Peter Zumthor, Herzog and de Meuron or SANAA. In this sense, Van der Laan can be seen as a key figure to link nineteenth-century thinking about space and contemporary architecture. From this point of view, Architectonic Space formulates important elements to redefine the religious space.
Is metaphor a valid concept for the configuration of sacred space? If so, are we at a time when, perhaps, the decisive thing is a clarification of the correlation between the Christian essence, the sacramental character of the liturgy and, therefore, the ways in which architecture -with the rest arts- should it serve itself as a channel to the sacrament? This communication attempts to respond, from the field of Aesthetics, to one of the questions that have not yet been fully answered since the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council: how the temple is and should be the domain of the Mystery, and not only nor mainly the scenario of a representation. Likewise, we point out some practical consequences that for the contemporary religious building entails the Eucharistic essence of the Christian life. Beyond the practical corollaries of modernism, still present in the liturgy, it seems today more than ever necessary to undertake a rediscovery, from the sacramental theological heart of the world, of a renewed conception of religious architecture that underlines its natural vocation to be the refuge of the Gift and the People of God. The essentially superior terrain of divine Art and Beauty are, in a primary way, the natural locus where this vivification of the sacred space is realized, the primal territory in which the metaphor emerges as the first engine of the architect's subcreative task.
The World Health Organization, a growing number of health professionals and the public, currently equate good health not simply to the absence of disease, but also to the presence of positive well-being. The traditional biomedical model of health has given way to the biopsychosocial model, which advocates a more holistic approach to health, taking into account not only the biological, but also our social, psychological, physiological and spiritual health. The places we inhabit have the potential to contribute significantly to our health. The desecration of the place, however, has made it increasingly difficult for modern societies to rediscover the existential dimensions of the sacred that were once easily accessible to man from archaic societies in everyday places. When the specific characteristics are high in the project (as seen in the sacred architecture), the resulting place can go from being merely secular to becoming sacred. How, then, could contemporary architecture be addressed, so that everyday places support our spiritual health? What are the contributing factors? Can they be objectified? The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenological differences between the sacred and the secular in architecture. The Rothko Chapel (sacred building) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (secular building) were selected as case studies for research. The two case studies are located in Houston, Texas. The qualitative data were collected through discussion groups according to two parameters. The group discussion panel consisted of six participants: three architects and three spiritual mentors from Houston. The analyzed data was synthesized to, in the first place, explore the meaning of the sacred and the secular based on the responses of the participants; second, to examine whether the selected buildings had been experienced as sacred or not; Third, explore the differences in experiences brought about in sacred and secular buildings; and fourth, to explore how and in what way the architecture suggests sacredness (or nothingness) in the selected buildings. From the data collected and analyzed, a series of design guidelines for the sacred place were generated, and a matrix-model for decision-making was developed. The design guidelines are intended to help architects in the creation of everyday architecture that is extraordinary and sacred.
The contemporary European city is shown as composed of two distinct and deeply diverse parts in the compositional and meaningful characteristics: the historical center, with a fabric sedimented over the centuries, usually of modest dimensions and still recognizable in its ancient limits; and the periphery, which in little more than a century has reached much greater dimensions than the entire surface of the old core. The two parts differ from each other in regard to the structure of the urban fabric, either because of the different quality of the places of socialization, or already, in a concrete way, as regards the presence and presence of the sacred. In order to grasp the reasons and the main elements of the contemporary city, in order to evaluate what the possible role of a cultic place plays in it, it is necessary to go through the fundamental stages of the development of the city and try to understand the important reasons in relation to what sacrum.
This intervention aims to investigate, through the analysis of a concrete case, the relationship between the thermal city and the ecclesial building during the last century. It describes, then, a vision of Italian architecture in a particular historical and cultural context, positioning itself within broader themes: the sacred architecture of the 20th century and the architecture of the thermal cities. Thermal cities that, with certainty, are always different, capturing and transmitting new and refined architectural expressions; In this sense, the diffusion of the Liberty style in these contexts is paradigmatic. Since the beginning of the 20th century, there has been a particular boost in the tourist development of spa cities. The profound transformation of nineteenth-century society, along with the passage of an aristocratic clientele to a bourgeois clientele, characterizes the transformation of functional models and representativeness in the thermal baths. In particular, since the second decade of the century, an attempt has been made to respond to the dual elitist and community vocation: this will inevitably influence the urban development of the city already characterized by a peculiar physiognomy. In Italy, in the cases that we are going to examine, the urban readjustment derived from the development of thermal tourism, involved enormous works of demolition of valuable buildings, among which also preexisting churches; demolitions that were necessary to make room for the new architecture, also cultural, more appropriate to the demands of the time and representative of the peculiarity of these places. In this context, the identity of the new ecclesiastical building assumed values, either from the religious point of view or as a sign of civil society that was also, on the other hand, an economically participant in construction. The importance and complexity of the subject induced the community, in some cases to call specific competitions in which many architects and engineers were involved, offering, precisely, a valuable perspective of the architectural culture of the time on the theme of the sacred building .
The project for the church and the parish complex of the Cavedone district, in Bologna, is included in a debate that has animated the Italian architectural world in the so-called period of reconstruction, from the postwar period to the mid-sixties, approximately . This debate was interested in the project of buildings for public and popular construction, that responded completely to the social purpose to which they were called. To develop the project of this church, along with that of the whole neighborhood, came the engineer-architect Federico Gorio, an important figure of the national panorama of that period for the contribution made precisely to the search for a new identity of Italian architecture. The first project developed for the church clearly shows the willingness to respond in a twofold way: the lay need, typical of a State in the renovation phase, to give architecture a new purpose that is expressed above all through the revaluation of its social function, and the religious need to restore to the church its original vocation of identification with the community, with the assembly (the ecclesia). The vision of community spaces as instruments of social cohesion represents the value shared by two personalities: the architect Federico Gorio and Cardinal Lercaro, who are at the beginning of the church project and the attached structure of Cavedone street. The analysis of the project in question, often reconsidered and never carried out, offers at the same time the possibility of reinterpreting - also living the practical difficulty of realization and communication - the elements of a historically central debate for the Italian and European sacred architecture of that period , and the possibility of valuing the elements of modernity and actuality that this project presents, in light of the most recent evolution of religious and secular thought in this regard.
General features. The image of the parish. Bruno Zevi wrote already in the years before the Council: Is the religious building integrated organically into the urban fabric or does it reject it? The configuration of the Christian temple in what way does it reflect the reality of the urban fabric in which it arises? The question is reduced to a problem of expression towards the exterior, taking into account that the formal and volumetric variables come from liturgical and projective behaviors. That is why the theme of the adequacy of the presence of the parish in the neighborhood through the material - and of course the form - opens a new debate, which wanders between what is considered an industrial profile that is not always it pleases, the intended or concealed - accepted or rejected - monumentality of the temple, and in short, the immersion of the image of the urban church within the urban environment. Industrial image With the development of the architectural avant-garde, the image of the temple emerges from the signs conditioned by the styles, and as a consequence, it searches for new areas of expression. Due to the universalism that is sought for modern architecture, it is considered in certain theoretical areas to annul the differentiation between religious and profane buildings. From the neighborhood. This new church in the city needs an explicit figuration. This is because, in order for the ritual discourse to be clear, the sign must express its symbolic meaning more deeply. In short, the question of the urban image of the temple remains a living debate, dependent on the subsequent and progressive decline in the creation of parishes in the coming decades, as the ever-changing appreciation of dialectics and the discourses of architectural language.
In Badajoz, the provincial capital, a considerable number of new religious temples are erected between 1900 and 2000, with different styles that are the result of historical evolution and that express the tastes of the comitentes. Most of these temples, of good invoice, are built to cover the spiritual needs of newly created neighborhoods. The first examples still have a very strong influence of the predominant historicism and eclecticism during the s. XIX; With the Francoism will be when the interest in religious architecture resurfaces, in principle with an academic and traditional language while the arrival of the theses of the Second Vatican Council will impose visible changes in the conception of new parishes. Some recent examples of our democracy, however, have not opted for the formal quality that characterized the immediately preceding examples, which are the most original aesthetically. We also include those examples made in satellite neighborhoods or settlements dependent on Badajoz.
The effects of globalization and secularization in today's urban landscape invite the Church to make an architecture that responds to its new role as an immigrant more within the secular urban context, and finds its meaning in representing the alien and offering shelters sacramentals to a widely secularized society. Religion occupies a peripheral and not central role within the great urban context and, consequently, can be revealed through architectural materializations that aspire, not to the iconography of form, but to an iconography of relevance. The history of the place of worship in the western city has been that of the inversion of meaning and meaning. This is directly related to the restructuring of the centers of power and the consequent reforms of the urban fabric, since they represent manifestations of the changes in the emotional places of nations and of Western cultures throughout history. While the temple occupied the center of Athens and Constantinople, in New York and Hong Kong this place is occupied by commerce. The western city has readjusted its psychic and existential center as a reinvention of the deity of the era, which allows the city to turn to the service of the current cultural god. The Church can attest that the architectural history of the West has witnessed how civil architecture has encased itself in ecclesiastical aesthetics. The rise of modern institutions to the supposed upper echelons of cultural importance has resulted in a confusion of the sacred spaces of the Church, which become less iconographic in urban contexts, curtains of urban life, as they are no longer central nor significantly relevant. In the worst case, it is about the absorption of sacred aesthetics by the profane. What should be the architectural response to this question on the part of the Church?
Architecture is a knowledge that accumulates over time, and that is concretized in knowing how to give measurement and space to the needs of man. Sometimes, very practical needs; others, with a different meaning, such as religion. I would simply like to say that the success of this congress, of the previous one and of the one that we predict next, resides, among other things, in that the history of Western architecture is, in reality, the history of the religious space.
