Cardinal Ravasi and "superstar" architect Paolo Portoghesi have laid in to the architectural style of some of the Churches that have recently been built in Italy. Sandro Magister reports today on articles written L'Osservatore Romano: New Churches. The Vatican Flunks the Italian Bishops
Cardinal Ravasi attacked the kind of modern Churches
[...] in which we find ourselves lost as in a conference hall, distracted as in a sports arena, packed in as at a tennis court, degraded as in a pretentious and vulgar house.Paolo Portoghesi mentioned specifically the three Churches that had won the Italian Bishops' Conference national architectural contest in 2000: those built in Foligno by Massimiliano Fuksas (above), in Catanzaro by Alessandro Pizzolato, and in Modena by Mauro Galantino (below).
Photo credit: Antonio Trogu
Magister's piece concludes with another article published in L'Osservatore, this time by Fr Timothy Verdon, an art historian from the US. Fr Verdon writes on "Basilica and Circle. The Tradition of the Great Churches of Rome." His analysis is very far from emphasising the idea of the people all being gathered round in a circle; he focusses instead on the well of light at the heart of the building and the centrality of Christ.
It is a relief to hear that there is some opposition to the ludicrously brutalist nonsense that seems to be popping up at great expense all over Italy when it would be possible to build Churches instead.
13 comments:
And France if Lilas is anything to go by. Thanks for the heads up to Magiser
Which part of the church is shown in the second picture? To me it looks like the cubicles in a swimming-pool changing room.
...Also I suspect that the favourite childhood toy of the architect of the church in the top picture was one of those shape-sorting boxes: are the different-shaped block and the little hammer to be found in the churchyard?
;-)
That is a bomb shelter, right?
I'm sorry to say, but that top "church" building reminds me of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
I suppose the reaction of the Italian architectural establishment will run in parallel to the alleged reaction of the elements of the musical establishment to James Macmillan's criticisms:-
- personal attacks on the work of the critics
- pulling strings to ensure unofficial blacklisting of the critic's own work
- whining about the non-adherence of the critics to the Spirit of V2
PS- is that really the name of the first architect? No, no. Am resisting the temptation to say....no - straight to post
Matthaeus - no idea what part of the Church it is. And I had the same thought myself.
Lots to learn from a post called "Industrial vs. Cistercian Austerity" by a monk of Heiligenkreuz.
Ravasi, an ITALIAN, complaining about pretentious and vulgar architecture?!
Has the guy ever BEEN to Italy?
But honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. It's Italian construction, right?
It'll all fall down of its own accord in five years or so...
@ Father Finigan
As an RICS qualified surveyor, I joined forces with Canon David Diamond, the C of E's late Guardian of Walsingham to call for the regeneration of the London bomb sites, and scrap metal yards in Deptford.
Together we put the Church architecture of St Paul's SE8 at heart of our City Challenge appeal for development of our Thames Gateway planning briefs, which was led by the call to change the visionless 'light industrial' vision for Deptford Power Station and Creekside to a true A Deo et Rege 'Housing, housing, housing and a hotel' Vision of Britain.
The princes-foundation.org can confirm that HRH The Prince of Wales accepted our invitation to open the First Premise development St Paul's Court.
Your post Blog dog on the 23rd December 2010, shows Oscar (not Brad Pitt from Interview with the Vampire) posing outside St Paul's AKA Thomas Archer's 'Pearl in the Heart of Deptford'(Sir John John Betjeman's words not mine), which will always be my Church for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Our Lady of the Rosary ( http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2010/10/celebrating-parish-feast-day.html ) pray for us in BNP leader Nick Griffin MEP's EU/GLA/LDA/ODA NEO-NAZI DEVELOPMENT TIMES Amen
PAPA RATZI ( http://www.thepapalvisit.org ) ORA PRO NOBIS!
Yours sincerely
Roy Hobson aka Our Lady's "Vesper" ON-LINE +
ROY HOBSON FRICES1990, FRICS1984,Grad Dipl QS
Vesper,
Thanks for mentioning St. Paul's, Deptford - I pass there nearly every day on the train to work, and always think that it is the most perfectly-proportioned and beautiful example of what a baroque parish church should look like.
(For regular followers of this blog - Zephirinus should take note in case he wins the lottery this weekend ;-))
St. Pauls does rather upstage Our Lady of the Assumption church on the other side of the railway - although I suspect the latter can claim the better interior (haven't been in there for quite a while, but recall a rather splendid reredos).
@ Matthaeus
The structural interior of St Paul's is magnificent, but it has the feel of a blank canvas.
When the Hollywood team for Jordon's 'Interview with the Vampire' took over the Church, they transformed the interior to look like the interior of New Orleans Cathedral, the effect of which was wondrous in the extreme.
The C of E's Father Peter Fellowes, and Nick Daubeny the famous film location manager appointed me as Community Liaison Officer for Deptford/London on the Neil Jordan film for Hollywood Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) at St Paul's Church, Deptford SE8.
As Community Liaison Officer for London, I was partly responsible for getting all the scenes of occult gratuitous violence involving Brad Pitt and the poet Heathcote Williams cut.
I presented the script to Father John Collier of St Lawrence's R.C Church in Sidcup, and told him that I believed that the scenes involving Brad Pitt's vampire attack, and murder, of the priest played by Heathcote Williams on holy ground, were so violent that they had deliberately been omitted from the main shoot at rich New Orleans R.C Cathedral, and transferred to the poor Baroque backdrop at St Paul's C of E Deptford, who couldn't afford to say NO.
All the St Paul's SE8 scenes were cut after Father Collier's subsequent intervention, and I seem to recall Dustin Hoffman using our very words 'gratuitous violence' in an SOS film industry campaign response.
The film had a star cast, a multi million dollar budget and a 666 script.
In my professional opinion Hollywood still owes poor England 999 serious damages for that piece of artwork, which I consider to be a malevolent attack on our group soul.
Our Lady of the Assumption in Deptford High Street was built approximately 100 years before the APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION OF POPE PIUS XII, MUNIFICENTISSIMUS DEUS, DEFINING THE DOGMA OF THE ASSUMPTION, November 1, 1950.
The reredos behind the altar won a European gold medal for interior design, and the subject of the Assumption of Mary was considered by C G Jung to be of stella importance with regard to the psycholgical development of humanity. I think he may well have been right about that, but Jung the occultist was so wrong about so many other things, I think we should concentrate on the words of POPE PIUS XII http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus_en.html
Our Lady of the Assumption pray for us!
PAPA RATZI ( http://www.thepapalvisit.org ) ORA PRO NOBIS!
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