Lugares de Culto. Duas Igrejas

Abstract

Architecture gives an answer to functional programs as her goal is to build protective places where man could develop activities or simply live. Cult architecture gives answers to beliefs and to religions. It generates spaces with a strong emotive weight which goal is to answer to an emotional need or to the physical construction of a cult that belongs to a society. Ancient Egipt, Micens or Nuralgic civilization built pyramids, Tholos and nuraghi. These physical forms gave answers to beliefs and became a way of marking the human existence in the surrounding nature. The strength of this pure shapes with a strong tectonic presence, may have served as reference to many architects that realize the strength of simplicity, the focus given to an unique element, the synthesis of the world becames a pure form built in a place. Pyramid, Tholoi and nuraghi are stone constructions that for being elementar and for using a resistance material, endure through time. Churches are the image of the catholic world. They assume themselves as centers of populated clusters and important places of worship. The Romanic was the first way to build the church that has spread across Europe. The Romanic churches are made of simple adjoining volumes and respond to a concrete liturgical program. This image of how to build the church and the rituals that it houses conditioned the remaining architectural projects that, in general, follow the Romanic church assumptions. Le Corbusier draws two churches: Ronchamp and Firminy. They are functional and internalized spaces where the light is filtered to play with the interior space. Another world is created inside that is not directly connected to the contemplation of nature or either to the profane world. The natural elements like the sun are still present and are valued because through them physical relations are intensify and the place acquires poetic moments. Beyond the poetic way that church lets the light in, also the feeling of protection is intensified by the mass that delimits both the church and the holy world. Siza draws Santa Maria's church like a typical European church, white and imposing. The worship space translates church-type into contemporary architecture. However, Siza, through form control and the set of volumes creates a holy space with innumerable functional demands without harming the nave, symmetry or the strength of the form. In Lousada, he makes an extraordinarily simple chapel similar to the churches built by Peter Zumthor in Switzerland and in Germany.When Peter Celsing draws the Nacksta Church, he synthesizes a series of functions in a concrete way and did not let the program change the initial image of the church. Artists like Richard Long, James Turrell and Chillida play with nature and the simplicity of interventions that aim to a broader, wider and richer world, the spiritual world where the body and the mind feel part of a whole and where essential perceptions and sensations are evidenced. If Richard Long walks and transforms nature, James Turrel values the light and sees the universe and nature as the source materials for his creations. Chillida creates public spaces that relate man with natural elements. To drew Sogn Benedetg's chapel and Bruder Klaus, Peter Zumthor has innumerous references that can serve as memory. When Peter Zunthor draws Sogn Benedetg's and Bruder Klaus's churches has, as possible references, a big number of constructions that cover different civilizations, cults and architects.