The emotion oF the inhabited sacred space

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 06:17:07 +0000
Num. 34

The church of the Blessed Giovanni Tavelli in Villa Fulvia
In 1987 I was assigned the task o fdesigning the Villa Fulvia Church by Monsignor Giulio Zerbini, Vicar General of the diocese of Ferrara. It was an unforgettably magic moment: planning a church for the city of my birth gave some kind of sense to the reflections I had been having about my identity.

However, in this note I prefer to focus on the emotion of seeing the architecture come to life in its immense white space, open to the faithful to worship, a unique structure that became the center of gravity for the neighborhood and a recognizable image of the life of a vast inhabited area.

The long period of planning and development (almost thirteen years) presented the project with moments of suffering and tension, but in the end these difficulties have become the "newness" of this architecture, its identity in the urban context, a new quality that crystallizes its image in a permanent manner. I would like to mention the dome and the colours of various parts of the external structure in contrast to the pure white of the inside.

The dome represents a fundamental step on the difficult path towards ecumenicalism, which we must ascribe to the teachings of John Paul II: the Church must breathe with two lungs, the East and the West. In this light, the design of the building in the form of a Greek cross and the presence of the dome are characteristics that belong to Eastern Churches.

The external image of the building is inspired by Giotto's paintings in the upper church in Assisi. In the background of one image there is a church illustrated in bright colours: pink, yellow and green, in the same way that the urban ensembles painted by contemporaries of the great Maestro are always colorful. We took this idea and worked accordingly, reassured by the unexpected positive response that we received. This highly imaginative elaboration of the exterior is contrasted by the whiteness of the interior, where even the wooden parts have been bleached. The baptistery is blessed with the presence of the light of the sun and the sky, where the hortus conclusus that surrounds it merges with the dialectics of nature and therefore also with that of light, in the house of the faithful. These are the fundamental "figures" that give meaning and strong individuality to this building, a decidedly avant-garde contribution to the debate on ecumenism.