Rodolfo García-Pablos

The Sacred Space Project

Abstract

This paper aims to establish the foundations of the particular poetic with which the architect Rodolfo García-Pablos and González-Quijano (Madrid, 1913/2001) faced the complex task of building churches for three decades.

Once admired the subtlety and strength of his proposals of the sixties, I pose the following question: what has happened to the lessons of this architect in the field of religious architecture have gone so unnoticed? The aim is to pose the difficulty of solving the problems generated by the construction of churches today, of analyzing their way of defining atmospheres and spaces, of studying their handling of materials and construction techniques -conditioned by economic availability- and analyzing the artistic integration developed in a field of simple geometries. It is about reflecting on the freedom of the architect to establish his own personal synthesis, both in the whole of his religious work and in the study of a concrete work: the parish church of the Sacred Hearts in Madrid.