Detail of the project ed. 2020

ENLACE ARQUI­TEC­TURA – SAN JUAN MARIA VIAN­NEY CHURCH

Design­er	Elisa Sil­va
Loca­tion	Media Legua — Var­gas State, Venezuela
Design Team	Enlace Arqui­tec­tura, Elisa Silva
Year	2018
Pho­to credits	Car­los Ancheta

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The San Juan María Vian­ney Church enjoys a mag­nif­i­cent view from the north­ern moun­tain range of Venezuela towards the Caribbean Sea and is part of the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty La Media Legua, approx­i­mate­ly two and a half hours from Cara­cas, in the state of Var­gas. The church is designed to receive 200 peo­ple from near­by areas, many of whom trav­el by foot. The project also con­tem­plates bed­rooms and spaces for spir­i­tu­al retreats for a future phase.

The church is built of con­crete blocks con­vert­ed into struc­tur­al walls by insert­ing rebar and poured con­crete into the inte­ri­or cav­i­ties. Above the 2.40- meter mark, which cor­re­sponds to 12 rows of blocks, open­ings begin to appear that increase in width as
the wall ris­es, allow­ing the inte­ri­or space to be ven­ti­lat­ed and nat­u­ral­ly illu­mi­nat­ed. Three larg­er open­ings at eye lev­el bring the exte­ri­or land­scape clos­er to the church, fram­ing trees and a cross. The con­struc­tion was done by mem­bers of the Media Legua com­mu­ni­ty. The mate­ri­als, con­crete blocks and steel, were cho­sen because they could be obtained
with rel­a­tive ease, since con­struc­tion mate­r­i­al short­ages have been an issue in the coun­try for many years. Anoth­er advan­tage is that con­crete and steel require min­i­mal maintenance.

The church is locat­ed in the Tar­mas Parish, which has a pop­u­la­tion of 13,500 inhab­i­tants, many of whom live in pover­ty. In terms of ter­ri­to­ry, the parish is very large with long dis­tances between villages. 

The grounds of the church have an area of over 2,000 m² that orig­i­nal­ly belonged to the Mon­ter­rey fam­i­ly, who were ben­e­fi­cia­ries in the 1960s Agrar­i­an Reform Law. Years lat­er, cuts were made into a piece of land to lev­el it, in prepa­ra­tion for a uni­ver­si­ty agri­cul­tur­al pro­gram that was nev­er mate­ri­al­ized. The idea of cre­at­ing a church instead, arose out of com­mu­ni­ty con­cern that the site might be expro­pri­at­ed by the gov­ern­ment to build a social­ist mar­ket or one of its social pro­grams known as “mis­sions” due to rumors they had heard. They decid­ed to approach Father Abelar­do Bazó, the Parish Priest of Tar­mas, with the pro­pos­al to build a church on the site. This idea also cor­re­sponds with the community´s lack of a near­by place of wor­ship, where most were oblig­ed to trav­el more than an hour on foot to get to a church. This is how the ini­tia­tive to cre­ate in that spe­cif­ic place, the
Church of Media Legua was born. It took 10 years to build, and was financed by the Fun­dación Adve­ni­at of Essen Ger­many, the New Evan­ge­liza­tion Fund of Madrid, the Parish of the San­tos Após­toles in Oviedo, Spain. España, and pri­vate dona­tions from fam­i­lies in
Venezuela for a total invest­ment of 47,000 USD. Once built, the church was con­se­crat­ed as San Juan María Vian­ney, in hon­or of the 150-year anniver­sary of the Ars Priest’s birth.

Today the church rep­re­sents the cen­ter of the com­mu­ni­ty. The space that pre­cedes the church func­tions as a pub­lic square and with suc­ces­sive dona­tions will be equipped with fur­ni­ture, light­ing and swings for chil­dren. Giv­en the cir­cum­stances and chal­lenges that arise in Venezuela to per­form the most mun­dane tasks, the fact that the community
man­aged to com­plete the church and use it for reli­gious cel­e­bra­tions is in and of itself a very sig­nif­i­cant achievement.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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