Re: Re: reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

Looks like some interesting reading there.

Some people will say that the renewed interest in the re-use of historical styles in current religious architecture constitutes something of a whacky sub-culture and that the practice of forging [or revealing] connections between historical revivalist architecture and liturgy or spirituality is little more than an attempt at retrospective justification.

Other people might say that exploring classical models and reviving historical styles is a legitimate response to some godawful modern church architecture that expensively failed to evoke the essence of a religious building and wantonly disregarded tradition without offering anything new that was of anything approaching equal value.

The fact is however that these extreme positions are not the full story. Some architects have made the leap to modernity and created striking contemporary church architecture that does evoke the valuable connection with tradition.

This is the ‘church of the autostrada’ outside Florence by Giovanni Michelucci, built 1960 – 64 [concurrent with Vatican 2].

The church is a sort of wayside chapel constructed to mark the completion of the major north/south motorway in Italy, and also as a way to commemerorate the construction workers who had died in the course of the road construction.

The exterior is less successful, but the interior is powerful and evocative. I can’t find any decent pictures on the web, this b+w pic comes from Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction, still the best book on architecture ever written.

Does this architecture not move Praxiteles?