Vol. 7 (2020): Architectures for a new liturgy. Actions on the religious heritage after Vatican II - Case studies

Since 2000, in Germany there are both new built churches (around one hundred, sixty for the Catholic dioceses) and abandoned churches (around 500-600 Catholic churches, as well as some 500 Protestants). The reconverted churches are a reality in the north and east of Germany, up to half the country. In the south, both in the Catholic dioceses and in the Protestant regional churches, there are only some first examples and initial debates on these issues. Most of the relevant works of architecture and art within ecclesiastical organizations are churches reorganized from the point of view of the portconciliar liturgy and for smaller parish groups. At present, there are already very good examples of all the indicated types of church architecture.

Since the second half of the 19th century in Britain High Church movements has aimed at updating the Anglican liturgy. In the post-war years, sensitive to the influence of the continental Liturgical Movement, these requests are translated into operational principles for the organisation of ecclesial spaces. The principles concern both the construction of new Anglican churches and the modernisation of old churches with respect to new liturgical needs. The last case is the focus of this communication. The objective of the text is to connect different experiences of adaptation and reconstruction of Anglican churches, before and around the years of the Second Vatican Council, highlighting the continental influences and investigating a peculiar British approach to ruins in architecture. The study focuses particularly on a symbolic episode, the contest for the new Coventry Cathedral, which fuelled the discussion about the value of ruins in restoring or rebuilding destroyed churches. In the wake of this theme, the paper introduces the works of two relevant figures in British Church building: George Gaze Pace (1915/75) and Robert Potter (1909/2010), whose churches represent an extraordinary example in the composition of a holy space in dialogue with ruins.

Due to a process of secularization many parish communities need to redefine their church use, reducing the liturgical space and bringing in other functions. In this contribution, we elaborate on the process of adapting existing churches to this reality. We argue that the spatial concepts developed by the Liturgical Movement in the context of Vatican II can become sources of inspiration. First, we define the relevant characteristics of the reform, instigated by figures like theologian Romano Guardini and architect Rudolf Schwarz. Second, we show how these characteristics can be applied in the case study of the Magdalena church in Bruges (Belgium). Rather than restoring the 19th century Gothic Revival church, we tried to translate its typology and layered quality into a contemporary space for liturgy and community, while at the same time opening up the church to its environment.

Facing the emergency of building new churches, while Bologna was living a demographic boom in the fifties, Giacomo Lercaro chose to create an integrate system of progress. The ritual form of faith is spatially determined according to the physical peculiarity of the place in which the salvation is celebrated by Familia Dei. This form invokes an aesthetic-symbolic quality, in order to enable the delivery of human and social poverty in coherence with the Mystery. These experiences accompany the hard research of an appropriate place for the form of faith and an adequate faith for the form of the place. Given the absolute symbolic relevance of the ecclesiastical building and the performative capacity of the ritual, every research and intervention depend to personal and pastoral requirement rooted into extra-liturgical area. In fact, fiddling with the ritual means not only tampering the celebratory quality, but reconfiguring the ecclesial identity itself.

Vatican II expressed norms for the liturgical installation of presbyters, a guide for the design of new churches. For the adaptation of the presbyters of churches before the Council, the proposals for intervention, diversified in time and space, have found fulfillment where there was no need to preserve elements of high patrimonial value. Instead, it was arduous to work in historic buildings, with elements of high artistic value. It is useful to consider significant examples to verify the solutions adopted and to favor an analysis of the interventions.
The Italian cathedrals of Casale Monferrato, Milan and Piacenza are taken into consideration to highlight the criteria that led to a fruitful comparison between architects, artists and liturgists in order to adopt adequate solutions for the presbyteral areas. The research highlights in some contexts proposals for the enhancement of existing works of art, in other new sculptures in harmony with the architectural building.

The following text’s objective is to briefly and modestly share reflections and documents which have helped to develop the project of preparing and repairing liturgical spaces of diverse times and places. Throughout the professional practice, sometimes the most surprising situations appear. Although they are not necessarily sought, they demand to be carefully, calmly, gently and reflectively undertaken. The field of architecture requires attention because of its changing reality. This significant fact implies an active and creative renovation in which the projection of the world to come demands the knowledge of the past. This has been the case, for example, of the projects for a new cancell or counterport in the Basilica of Santa María del Pino in Barcelona (2010) or the liturgical rehabilitation of the new chapel in a University Campus in Santiago de Chile (2017).

Scarce years before the Second Vatican Council, the accidental burning of an altarpiece in the Cathedral Church of Mar del Plata (Argentina), gave rise to a new and provocative work erected there —the only expression of modern religious art that would have existed for a long time in the city.
The new altarpiece (1961) was commissioned by Bishop Enrique Rau —an outstanding personality in liturgical music— who actively participated in all sessions of the Vatican II, as a member of the World Commission for the Reform of the Liturgy and as President of the Liturgical Department of CELAM.
The artwork, emerged from an artistic, cultural and spiritual context different from that which prevailed when the Neo-Gothic cathedral was built, stands out in its field expressing changes occurred in form and language, in view of the renovation that the local Church would begin shortly after, to adapt to the liturgical modifications arising from the Council.

Pateo do Collegio is the place where São Paulo was founded in 1554. The first buildings —a college and a church— featured colonial architecture in the 17th century, and the church in the 18th was abandoned after expulsion of the Jesuits from the country. Demolished in the late nineteenth century, in the early twentieth it was again owned by the Jesuits and a new building was built. In 2009 there was an important renovation of their places of worship, by Claudio Pastro. The arrangement of the elements is unusual and yet convenient. Pastro materialized the influence of the Second Vatican Council on art and architecture, being one of the authorized voices in Brazil that fostered paradigmatic experiences. The study of this reform is the object of this article: to analyze the elaborated and executed project, to identify the projectual solutions and to accurately record the contribution of this contemporary architecture.

Brazil is the eighth largest economy in the world and one of the ten most unequal countries. In the twentieth century the demographic explosion coupled with the rural exodus generated a great demand for new churches. Using the industrial architecture as the basis for these buildings was the only viable solution. Now, in the 21st century, the analysis and reformulation of these spaces becomes necessary.

Civilized by Christianity, Brazil, with over than 500 years of history, built temples under the influence and inspiration of its colonizers that contributed to the culture of this country of continental dimensions. Indigenous brothers in Christ, although numerically diminished, have a constructive identity and also play a key role in the evaluation of Brazilian architecture. After five centuries, the relationship of the Brazilian people with their temples goes through a moment of uncertainty with questionable architectural productions and most of the religious heritages degraded. Nevertheless, the mystagogical understanding of the sacred space after Vatican II is still a clearly evolving subject. Through this scenario, this article promotes debate about the role of the missionary architect in the interventions of the Brazilian sacred heritage and brings four case studies that demonstrate both the realities of inculturation for the implantation of an indigenous Church and those inherited from the architecture of immigration.

The pastoral renovation that the Second Vatican Council brought to the liturgy became a program to which architects sought to respond with new forms and solutions. In the Diocese of Lisbon, this work was led by SNIP - Secretariat of the New Churches of the Patriarchate, a small technical office created by Cardinal Cerejeira in 1961 to support the planning and construction of the many dozens of churches and chapels needed to be built throughout the diocese. But its work would not be limited to the new buildings. As SNIP recalled in 1968, in a time of renovation it became also necessary to remodel the old churches, adapting them to the needs and demands triggered by the conciliar liturgical Reform. Through five works carried out by SNIP between 1965 and 1985, it is intended to reveal the formal and programmatic options adopted by this office in its interventions in the heritage of the diocese of Lisbon.

Since the 1960s, the artistic and architectural interventions carried out in the church of Santa Isabel and Rato Chapel, in Lisbon, brought to the debate the overlap of different narratives in these two different spaces of worship: the first, is a parish church preserved by the earthquake of Lisbon (1755), which had its liturgical space redesigned before the Second Vatican Council; the second, is a private chapel annexed to a 18th century palace that became a symbolic worship space for students and engaged young professionals since the 1970s. Enriched with the work of either well-known artists or, sometimes, anonymous architects, the two case studies show us the life of monuments, where Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture participate in preserving and enhancing their cultural value. At the same time, the liturgical and pastoral activities are shown to be the engine behind successive interventions.

Over the last ten years, the T-113 Architecture Workshop in Barcelona has developed different interventions in celebratory spaces applying the liturgical innovation proposed by the Vatican Council II in dialogue with the space, the users and the project program. This professional practice has led to constant tension and learning that are intended to be communicated through the presentation of various projects carried out grouped into three sections. The first section deals with interventions that combine liturgical use with other pastoral activities; the second deals with the care in the design of the arhketopos, or foundational places of religious orders; the third is about the implementation of environmental and visual comfort facilities in reforms of sacred spaces linked to liturgical activity.

The development and codification of its own aesthetic within the Neocatechumenal Way has motivated the construction of new temples following the paradigms proposed by Kiko Argüello but also the intervention in existing churches following the characteristic centrality-axiality scheme of the neocatechumenal proposals. These interventions have made provisional adaptations or definitive liturgical adjustments, especially after the work of the architect Antonio Ábalos in the parish of San Pedro el Real in Madrid and the work of Maurizio Bergamo and Mattia del Prete in Italy.
In this paper, a series of liturgical adaptations made in pre-conciliar churches very different in their style will be analyzed. Although all these interventions follow the scheme of distribution of celebratory foci and assembly proposed by the neocatechumenal aesthetic, we will observe a double intervention route that opts for the stylistic similarity with the existing architectural environment or for the repetition of models used in new neocatechumenal projects.

The architects Fernández del Amo and Bellosillo played a leading role in the profound renovation that took place in the Diocese of Madrid from 1965, in need of new churches after its territorial reorganization. Both architects also carried out interventions in historic buildings, although they were done far from the active focus of Madrid. Two rural churches in Tiétar Valley (Ávila) by Fernández del Amo and El Salvador church in Soria by Bellosillo were drastically manipulated to adapt them to the post-conciliar liturgy, enriching the typological issues with the constructive or urban ones, as well as the integration of the arts. On the contrary, the rare projects of intervention in historical buildings in the Diocese of Madrid were never built.

The problem of the relationship between the old and the new runs through the entire constructed work of the Spanish architect José Ignacio Linazasoro; in fact, his best projects are probably those in which he has had to work with pre-existences, establishing a dialogue between memory and modernity. This is especially true for their interventions in religious heritage sites, where he have worked to improve the conditions of use of these historic buildings or to give them another use. In the church of Valdemaqueda (1998-2001), the construction of a new nave, added to the pre-existing late Gothic apse, offers the architect the opportunity to make a suggestive reflection on the meaning of the liturgical elements in the current sacred space. With a contemporary but essential language, full of plastic references, he uses the fundamental elements of all architecture —materiality, light, space— to redefine the whole of the church.

The liturgical renewal approved during the Second Vatican Council meant a morphological transformation for the religious buildings. Some churches that were at that time on project stage were then adapted to the new guidelines. Focusing in Barcelona, two cases stand out: the parish of Sant Sebastià, MBM’s work, and Sant Jeroni, a church included in the Iberian DoCoMoMo.
But over the years we realize that the most interesting cases are those in which social change was also satisfied. Thus, centuries-old churches adapt the linear sacred space while at the same time providing perimeter zones for alternative uses. This is the case of Santa Maria del Mar or Santa Anna.
This communication will examine the examples cited and will think about this last way of operating. It’s not only a matter of ‘conditioning’ or ‘reuse’, but about ‘multi-use’, a strategy with a vision of future, but already present in the gospels.