The San Buenaventura Seminary Resurrection Chapel in Mérida (Venezuela)

An Experience of Integration of the Arts in Architectural Heritage

Abstract

The San Buenaventura Seminary is located in Mérida (Venezuela). Designed by Manuel Mújica Millán, it has become a local architectonic heritage, and an essential part of mons. Chacón´s —the constructor archbishop— City of God. The chapel for the Minor Seminary was designed as a heritage intervention through an integration of the arts, in which the theme is Christ’s resurrection. With an austere language, the work of art stands as Le Corbusier’s «présense insigne». This integration was carried out by the TiA (Taller i Arte + Arquitectura). The visual and liturgical focus is the retable, in which Gómez Callejas’ work of Christ risen made in cuir de cordoue surges from the larger opening. It is the result of a work called «Reality Manifestations of the Mystery». The smaller opening is occupied by the tabernacle, a restored liturgical object. This way, art and architecture intend to be bonded in order to testify a live Incarnation: sacramental presence of the mystery of Passover, which has the objective of transformation through the cross and the new body of resurrection, according to Ratzinger.