The Scientific Committee of the Foundation met on 16 June 2017 Frate Sole For the evaluation of the proposals received at the VII edition of the European Prize of Sacred architecture admitted to judgement.
The jury, composed of Luigi Leoni, Giorgio Della Longa, Esteban Fernández Cobián, Caterina parrello, Valerio pennasso and Walter Zahner agreed to award the ex aequo Prize to Four projects.
These are very diversified contributions, which underlie research pathways in areas between them also distant and which imply answers that would have been inappropriate to put in direct comparison. Projects that essentially express ways of understanding the project of the sacred in a plural manner. The four award-winning jobs also do not necessarily deviate in an absolute way above the others.
Usual, other contributions were deemed worthy of attention and appreciated by the jury.
First Prize ex aequo
<strong style="font-family: Roboto; font-size: 24px;">Irmina Niewczas</strong>
Hermitage. Prayer Enclave in Suchedniów
This is the project of a hermitage inside a quarry in the heart of Poland. A hermitage conceived for an itinerary of the spirit in which, in solitude, the hermit lives in consecutive twelve-cell days. Cells with common matrix but always different. An ambitious programme that underpins an arduous theme: Is it possible to characterize the cells to express through architecture The Ten Commandments and the Commandment of love? The candidate, who recognizes a dose of "ambiguity" in this research, works with a language of strong abstraction, without slipping on allegory, in the search for variations to the theme.
Also proposed are the places for community life including the chapel in the heart of the Eremitic center. introverted, inscribed in the center of the water Mirror of the quarry, manifested on the surface, as in the famous monolithic churches carved in stone in northern Ethiopia, the cross of its form.
As with other buildings, the central sacred space is characterised by harsh, rough matter of concrete in dialogue with the red dominant of the quarry and by the light penetrating into the excavated spaces. A harsh language, at the edge of habitability, a language that presupposes a adhesion, a choice of life; It seems to feel the silence in this place dug in the natural landscape.
A complex project, almost a tour de force, in which the creative vein of the architect has been able to be declined in the variants of the theme; A poetic path that the jury appreciated.
Giulia Drago, Federica ingenuity, Roberta Laera, Valentina Lazzaro, Simona L'erario
The castle of Rothenfels is the form of the Sacred building: Rudolf Schwarz and Romano Guardini.
It can only be considered as ambitious the programme of the Working Group of the Politecnico di Bari, engaged in a research "aimed at identifying the typological and morphological characteristics of the work of Schwarz on the sacred building, to reach the definition of General characters of its buildings and reinterpret them in the design phase that saw the completion of the area of the castle of Rothenfels and the design of a new sacred building ".
Therefore, the close analysis of the work of Rudolf Schwarz is able to bring to the synthesis constituted by the project of extension of the fortified village which saw the birth of the founding action of the German architect indissolubly linked to the Magisterium of the theologian Guardini. The jury evaluates with interest and appreciates the courageous proof that proposes a revision of the village of Rothenfels where the historical fences are now more lable. The jury appreciates the project of the new church, which skillfully combines the territorial scale with that of man, where the faithful find a new space for community meetings in the place that has seen the new European ecclesial architecture germinate. The composition and the language are guided by the rigor; Almost unscrupulous, on the contrary, is the juxtaposition of the new church to the ancient mole of the castle. The jury recognizes the communicative quality of the work.
Lucilla Di Paolo
San Vito Parish Complex in Taranto
The project building located in the promontory of San Vito in Taranto could be defined as conventional compared to the others; This is the project of a parish complex, a recurring theme in the work of students.
The task is never simple when you go to compare for example with the peripherization of the Territory.
The theme is to characterize the parish complex in an urban area that has undergone the disinterest if not even the violence of man; The theme is to find a strong element to mark an identity, resolved by working on the ancient traces of a landscape partly corrupt; The theme is to give prominence to the urban front to qualify the ecclesial building in the interior; The theme is to combine and juxtapose the parts of the ensemble and to give the interior a solution of course, first of all to the liturgical classroom.
The jury appreciated in this work the methodological process and the architectural result.
Stephen Bell
A new Orthodox church for the Yzmaylovo neighbourhood in Moscow
The Russian Orthodox Church plans the construction of 400 new churches to heal in part the destruction of the recent past. The candidate takes the challenge with the project of the new religious pole in the district of Yzmaylovo, in the eastern peripheral district of the city of Moscow, characterized by the model of the widespread city. An urban project in which, as usual, it is the temple that becomes a catalyst of the surrounding.
Orthodox temple that rises on the urban crossroads above the streams of the city today. The type adopted in fact is that of the city at two levels; The lower floor, of the urban functions in which the parish buildings are located, and the upper floor, in which the temple stands. A refined monument in the center of the square that, with its orientation to the east, generates a transgression with respect to the geometries of the existing fabric.
The jury appreciated the development of the complex theme, which included answers to the relationship between tradition and innovation, between existing and addition, between identities and differences.
A theme that combines answers to the urban scale and the temple detail solution. The governance of complexity has impressed the jury which has also appreciated the communicative quality of the work.
