Vol. 2 No. 1 (2009): Between Concept and Identity (lectures)

Cover and index of the issue.

The identity of the places of worship is one of the most difficult problems faced by religious architecture at the start of this new millennium. The globalising experiences demand peremptorily a reflection, both a conceptual and a situational one, about the origin of objects, people and institutions.

The easiness with which foreign cultural systems are currently reached allows multiple exchanges, some of them leading to a transfer of values and to inter-religion dialogue. This happens as a result of the on-going influx of migrants to the rich and strongly secular countries of Europe and North America, the repeated fundamentalism outbreaks in various corners of the World and the gradual religious opening of the Far East.

Nevertheless, the chance of these migration flows annihilating the already-existing religious identities is perceived as a problem. This problem is directly linked to the survival of architecture as a system carrying a material representation of the divine and constituting a self-reference system for the community of believers.

Therefore, we may ask ourselves to what extent the new religious architecture has given room to an abstract type of formal experimentation which is disconnected from social reality. Does this architecture maintain its bridging, sacramental value or, on the contrary, has it given way to the conceptualist trends still alive in the artistic world? Is metaphor a valid concept for Christian cult? Is there an essential aspect linking our architecture to the centuries-old tradition of the Catholic Church?

Different architectural, pedagogical, exhibition and formal initiatives have arisen in recent years and it is necessary to get to know them, with the purpose of understanding where is contemporary religious architecture heading in its eternal search for a permanent identity.

The generic theme of this congress is contemporary religious architecture. And the specific issue asks us to consider contemporary sacred architecture within a dialectical framework between concept and identity. For me, the key term is contemporary: of our time. This seems to presuppose a particular historical consciousness: of what we understand - or at least of what we believe - that our specific place in history demands or obtains: a way of thinking about sacred architecture that is respectful of our contemporary situation. This also suggests that our current response may well be different from that of past eras.

But each era is contemporary. And all we can do is contemporary architecture. We simply can not think of architecture except as contemporaries of our own time. We can no longer transform stone into sculpture with the vision and mind of a medieval stonemason. Nor are we already occupied with the controversies of the Counter-Reformation that made up the magnificent Baroque churches. We are no longer involved in the Christological debates that influenced the architectures of the churches in the time of Justinian. Neither the movement of the Gothic Revival is understood as a modern interpretation of an authentic medieval building. Neither Renaissance classicism can be confused with that of an ancient Greek or Roman temple, just as none of these contemporary neo-classical churches could be confused with the work of a Renaissance genius, such as Palladio, Bramante or Alberti. So I think the fascination with the contemporary concept is problematic.

In spite of everything, this question of contemporary sacred architecture seems to be the dialectical nucleus in which architects and liturgists have been engaged for the last hundred years, more or less. I must point out that we need to respect the particularities of our time, and that it is useful to examine to what extent they should influence our decision-making, and what values ​​are being introduced in our approach to sacred architecture. But the degree to which they could influence our approach to sacred architecture is much more limited.

The reason for being of the liturgy and worship implemented in the program of the project, and put in tension with the spatial models derived from the architectural forms that celebrate faith and praise the Creator God, make these same architectural forms are perceived as values ​​or goods, both material and spiritual. Because by glossing Jean Hani we could say that sacred art is the vehicle of the divine spirit, since the artistic form allows us to directly assimilate the transcendent and suprarational truths; and it is that the purpose of art consists in revealing the image of the divine nature imprinted in the created, realizing visible objects that are symbols of the invisible God. The architectural forms thus conceived - and art in general - possess what we can call a sacramental value. They are a celebration, and from that perception, a church is not simply a building, nor a monument, but a sanctuary, a temple. Its purpose is not only to gather the faithful, but to create for them an atmosphere that allows grace to manifest itself better. This comes from Christian theology and relates in one way or another to aspects of the tradition of universal and local symbolism - the theological and cosmological - such as ritual orientation, the identification of the temple with the body of Christ (which it is when the Latin or even Greek cross passes), the rich symbolism of the elements that intervene in the holy sacrifice of the mass centered around the cross, etc.

But I think - and that is what I would like to make clear here - that identity also manifests itself through historical and current architecture through collective and individual perception and emotion. It is through liturgy and worship that this identity perception is made possible in the temple. It is not the simple cultural visit, much less the mass tourist visit in which there are some quick explanations to get immediately to another monument: not at all. The perception of Catholic theological and cosmological value occurs primarily through liturgy and worship.

What I am going to tell in this forum is the story of a bishop of the city of Bologna with a taste of legend and who, in the course of sixteen years of the 20th century, on horseback, has fought in a series of victorious battles that ended, in the end, in an epic defeat. The character at the center of this event is a priest, named Giacomo, son of Giuseppe Lercaro and Aurelia Picasso, born in front of the sea of ​​Genoa on October 28, 1891, ordained a priest in 1914 and appointed by the Supreme Pontiff , archbishop at the Bologna headquarters in 1952.

Anticipate now, so that the public can now enter the global dimension of that historical moment, that Lercaro, by assuming the episcopal dignity of Bologna at the time of its full post-war demographic and urban development, found the need to have to face the pressing problem of procuring, in the newly urbanized areas, the lands that would eventually receive future pastoral organizations in the territory, before the commercial construction saturates the whole set of plots. This is what Lercaro, in the sixteen years in which he remains at the Bologna headquarters, manages to realize, without taxing the impoverished boxes of the curia, but obtaining it directly from the citizens, according to a process with guarantee of which we will speak.

The story is known. But I remember it and I anticipate it so that the continuation of the story contains, for all the listeners, the final reference of the tragedy. On February 12, 1968, Lercaro, after an exceptional episcopate that managed to drag the city to a state of enthusiastic prospect of adherence to the Christian spirit and faith, was forced, by an underground maneuver of the Roman curia, promoted by characters reactionaries of the councils of San Pedro de Roma and San Petronio de Bologna, to leave their diocese to retire to private life. But how can you reach such a serious and dramatic decision that is unparalleled in the history of the Catholic Church? What does Lercaro actually accomplish in the limited time frame that was granted to him? Let's go by parts.

It can be seen that today, with this change of the world, with globalization, that religions have become a phenomenon, a mode of identity. And if we ask ourselves what the answers should be in terms of "identity" in terms of architecture, it is because I think we all agree that architecture should promote an identity. The problem is: what identity? I think that today speakers have been at this table holding very distant positions. And this can fuel a debate between several positions.

Obviously, there is no talk here about looking for a certain quality of architecture, but an identity in architecture. We know there is a serious problem. In Italy a certain controversy has lately been opened because Bishop Gianfranco Ravasi, who is the president of the Vatican's Commission for Culture, questioned the state of sacred architecture in Italy, has said that the churches are all churches-garage, churches-parking. This we know is a problem. All of us here know well that statistically the quality of religious architecture is a problem.

This church, located in Pamplona, ​​is the result of a contest promoted by the Archdiocese of Pamplona and Tudela, at a time in 2000 where this plausible policy of competitions to obtain religious buildings of certain relevance and interest was reborn. And as history has taught us, it is the best formula to obtain optimal results. It was a contest convened with clear and sensible bases, with a well-known and solvent jury, with reasonable conditions and with an absolute naturalness. I say this because the bidding documents for this church -which is neither a simple nor a small building- would be about ten pages, compared to other contests to which we are accustomed, promoted by the Administration, which have one hundred and fifty pages, and which really, when you finish the contest you have not yet understood the specifications. With this, I want to encourage the ecclesiastical curia to continue with this policy - which will rescue it - because we think it is the best tool to grow the heritage of religious architecture in our country.

The program that we were asked for was a parish church: a temple with a capacity for four hundred people and a daily chapel for one hundred people. In turn, a parish center that had rooms for various uses, as well as the offices and catechism rooms needed in this type of sets. The program was a very simple, very clear thing. We introduced ourselves and we got to it.

In an autobiographical text written towards the end of his life, Hans van der Laan pointed out, remembering his childhood and adolescence years, that the main objective in those crucial years for his training had been the knowledge of nature: «Slow but surely, "he writes," I entered into the life of nature, being aware that it had been created by God. My older sister, who died during the war, had as a teacher, both in elementary school and in high school, a nun who, according to the school's way, accompanied her students from the first to the last class. This Sister Josefa always told them in class the biblical story of Creation, which applied to everything. My sister told it to the little brother -that is to say, to me-, and I verified it in the field, during my solitary walks ».

Certainly, the successive stages of his youth formation were marked, as he himself testifies in that text, by other objectives: the university years for the knowledge of society, the beginning of the monastic life for the knowledge of the liturgy. However, this interest in discovering the order that underlies nature, not only would not disappear, but with the passage of time would intensify and deepen. In fact, all its architecture was marked by the desire to prolong and complete that order, since it always conceived the architectural space as the place that allows man to establish a harmonious relationship with the natural environment. To achieve this, Van der Laan would use the 'plastic number', which was designed as the instrument capable of introducing, in the artificial world created by man, the characteristic intelligibility of Creation as a divine work.

I'm going to basically explain a teaching experience; a subject that I have been teaching for four years at the School of Architecture of Madrid, which started with a small initiative - a research seminar on architecture and liturgy - by the then chaplain of the school. And at a certain moment, we saw the possibility of transforming that seminar into a subject of free configuration. In such a way that I made the procedures, I designed a program, and the subject has been introduced in the curriculum. I think we are the first architecture school in Spain that has a subject of this nature. As you will understand, it is a signature that has only been developing for four years and for which I had to start practically from scratch; not because there was no bibliography, but because the special point of view I wanted to transmit to my students required it.

Having said that, I want to present what basically constitutes my main objective: how to develop in students what I call «symbolic thinking capacity». In my opinion, this ability is at the base of the understanding of the ideas that underlie a sacred building, and constitutes a field of research so wide -and in a sense so foreign to our contemporary culture- that my subject intends to investigate how to build that bridge. Therefore, we still do not have concrete proposals, we have not built a church, we have not yet done any experimental workshops. We are opening a line of research, but we think we are on the right track. And I see this in the enthusiasm and response of my students, most of whom are not believers, some of them are not even baptized or have simply never heard of liturgy or theology. Then, you will understand that trying to transmit, that trying to introduce into your heart and in your head the vibration necessary to arouse artistic creation is an exciting challenge - or that I have assumed as exciting - and in which possibly the person who learns the most is me same

Father Costantino Ruggeri was born in Adro - an Italian town near Lake Iseo, in the province of Brescia - in 1925, and finished his laborious and intense life on earth in 2007. Religious and artist, he knew how to make both vocations compatible; as he himself said, he had been granted the grace and joy of having identified his faith in art and his art in faith.

A brother of his in religion, Father Michele Piccirillo, famous archeologist of the Studium Biblicum in Jerusalem, has written: "In the precesses of Vespers of the Liturgy of the Hours, on the Tuesdays of the third week the Church invites us to pray like this: Lord , we pray for the artists to whom you have entrusted the mission to reveal the splendor of your Face; make their works bring to humanity a message of peace and hope ».

He adds: "In that spirit I think we should thank the Lord for all that Father Costantino has done for the Church and for the Franciscan Order. He has been a Christian and Franciscan artist, with the sacred fire of beauty inside him. A Christian, a priest, lives to beautify the Church of God, living his life behind the wake of Christ (...) Father Costantino has made the Church more beautiful, living his life as a Christian and a priest, making available his artistic skills, of which God has made him master in abundance ».

Let's briefly go through the stages of his life.

The truth is that I am a bit out of my way. I am an artist and I handle well with the forms, but I am not used to giving lectures. Therefore, what I will try to do is a reflection on a series of my intuitions. Creative work is usually done on a plane that is not purely conceptual, although later we try to conceptualize it. And I will make that effort to try to concretize and conceptualize a series of intuitions in relation to iconography, and specifically, with religious iconography. I am going to expose a process - to put it in some way - inconclusive; a process, a way of dealing with the iconography that I am currently considering and which, in fact, has not yet ended. It is something that I am experiencing, and you will be able to see some images of the results that we are getting in the study.

The other day I was shown a representation of the Virgin and Child in her arms, in her breast, that I had done when I was studying fifth career. And it caught my attention to see that image again, because it was framed within a speech that was related to the projects of Jorge Oteiza. At that time I was very interested in the proposals of religious imagery that Oteiza had made. And those forms, which were tremendously subtle, almost specialists, were skimming abstraction. To get an idea, it was an image emptied, sculpted in negative and then positive. In such a way that what you found was a kind of niche but that had nothing to do with a niche. It was a hole, a kind of grotto in which a large body was imbedded that was a representation of the Mother and integrated into that body was the Child, finally at the feet of the Mother a saint prostrates and kisses them. This speech, to me, has sometimes raised a question that I put here on the table: the subject of communication.

As is the round table that will close these three days, and as I think that the feeling of most of the people who have attended this congress has been that they have had few opportunities to participate, we will try to make this the right time. There have been many issues that have come up, and I am not the person in charge of synthesizing them. But in any case, I'm going to make you a kind of flash of ideas that have been coming out. For example, the sacred architectural space as activator of the sacred experience. Binomials such as the metaphor-symbol relationship, temple-church, architecture-urbanism or functionalism-liturgy.
I remember that in the first congress we all left here on that day as today saying: the program is the liturgy. I do not say that then we would necessarily agree with this phrase, but in these sessions perhaps the claim of architecture has been launched. The architecture, and from the analysis of the problems, spoke of a radical functional analysis. But I'm not going to insist much more: nature, architecture, liturgy, there are many appropriate topics, but there are also other perspectives that converge, as for example in the case of the liturgy and in the case of worship, with images.
How do architecture and images dialogue in the definition of art or contemporary sacred space? Languages, techniques, materials, procedures ... the iconicity of the sacred image through the narrative episodes, the ritual episodes, the world of furniture, the world of stained glass, the world of liturgical objects, the world of the clothing, the synthesis of the arts. Could the architect move away or in some way get rid of the problems of iconicity in the sacred space? How do they dialogue, how do they debate?

You have set out on your way to Ourense to share something that you carry deep within your heart. Our concern for spirituality and beauty has brought us together in this religious architecture congress to face the capital issue of identity in the sacred space. We have listened to papers and communications that have renewed our enthusiasm and our commitment. Thanks to all the speakers for this wonderful hope that illuminates our concerns.

This congress has also been - and in a very special way - a moment of joy. I enjoy who is looking forward, and joy of those who listen to something that we are looking for with joy and we know we are on the way. We should say once again that architecture is not the problem, but at this moment architecture is the great opportunity. The same could be said of the other fine arts, especially sculpture, with these expressions that we have heard so beautifully exposed today.