Detail of the project ed. 2016

par­ro­quia-iesu / Rafael Mon­eo Arqui­tec­to SL

Design­er	Rafael Moneo
Loca­tion	San Sebastián (aveni­da de Barcelona nº2)
Design Team	Rafael Mon­eo, David Good­man, Eduar­do Aril­la, Gabriel Fer­­nán­dez-Abas­­cal, Luis Ramos
Year	2011
Pho­to credits	All the pic­tures ©Fran­cis­co Berreteaga

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

After the Los Ange­les Cathe­dral, the Rib­eras de Loio­la Parish Church built on the mean­der­ing riv­er Urumea is a new expe­ri­ence for the archi­tect in the com­plex ter­ri­to­ry of reli­gious archi­tec­ture. And so,if the Los Ange­les’ com­mis­sion was intim­i­dat­ing for the sym­bol­ic pres­ence assert­ed by the Cathe­dral and by its scale, the Rib­eras de Loio­la Parish Church if free of such bur­dens. In this case, the archi­tect is asked to pro­vide a space that con­tributes to the life of a Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty amidst our plu­ral­is­tic and diverse society.
The Parish Church was thus cre­at­ed with a will­ing­ness to pro­vide ser­vice, at the thresh­old of a res­i­den­tial area con­nect­ed to the city by a park. In the Parish Church, it is no longer the vol­ume that impos­es itself but rather and the sharp nee­dle of its steeple that iden­ti­fies the church as the axis around which all social life inevitably revolves. The com­pact vol­ume of the Parish Church offers itself with an open ges­ture: as an island that is always ready to wel­come every­one, not only those who share the same faith. A patio, a porch, lec­ture halls, work­shops, accom­mo­da­tion for the pas­tor and the curates … and, on the ground floor, open­ing direct­ly onto the park, a super­mar­ket, which we under­stand as a meet­ing place: an con­tem­po­rary ver­sion of the mar­kets in the por­ti­cos of his­toric cities.
Before reach­ing the church entrance,there is a fil­ter space to make us aware of what we seek when we go to church. The space is abstract, cubic, and its ver­ti­cal nature makes is quite dif­fer­ent from what we under­stand in our cul­ture as the typ­i­cal reli­gious space, the space that we admire in Goth­ic cathe­drals. Again, the cross on the ceil­ing and with it the pres­ence of light, as the metaphor­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of transcendence.
To con­clude I should men­tion how much all of us involved in the con­struc­tionof this Parish Church felt the pres­ence of the work of Oteiza and Chill­i­da: hopefully,in itsar­chi­tec­ture there will remain a trace of their teachings

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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