Enlightened Worship

Architect Richard Meier gives Church a modernist treatment

If the archdiocese of Rome was hoping to become a hipper institution - architecturally speaking, anyway - with its 1996 selection of Richard Meier to build a grand new church on the outskirts of Rome, few would have argued with the choice of Meier. He is an American modernist who distills his buildings to their essence.
And so it is essence that shines through the American architect's design of the new Jubilee Church, located in the Rome suburb of Tor Tre Teste and consecrated just last month. Jubilee was originally commissioned for the archdiocese's Millennium Project, but the church is now also known as Dio Padre Misericordioso in celebration of the 25th year of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. It is the 50th new church and community centre built in recent years in the Rome area by the archdiocese and 15 more are planned.
"When I think of a place of worship, I think of a place where one can sit and be reminded of all the things that are important outside our individual lives," Meier said last month. The veteran New York architect said "to express spirituality, the architect has to think of the original material of architecture, space and light". Along with form, the three elements have provided the foundation for Meier's award-winning 40-year practice.
The exterior of Dio Padre Misericordioso is remarkable for its three white concrete shells, resembling ship sails, the tallest of which reaches 88 feet in height. Glazed skylights connect the shells which, along with a spine wall, constitute the church nave. The white concrete forms are intended to suggest the Holy Trinity and a reflecting pool recalls baptismal waters. Meier says the trio of shells "define an enveloping atmosphere in which the light from the skylights above create a luminous spatial experience, and the rays of sunlight serve as a mystic metaphor of the presence of God". The white concrete used for the project was first invented for Pier Luigi Nervi's design of Rome's Olympic Stadium for the 1960 Games. "The engineering effort involved in erecting the shells was Herculean and Italcementi (a project construction partner) did a fantastic job of realizing my design," says Meier, who received the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1984. In accepting the award, Meier noted the benefit of choosing white as a building colour. The architect said "the whiteness of white is never just white; it is almost always transformed by light and that which is changing; the sky, the clouds, the sun and moon".
The light-filled 9,000-square-foot interior of Dio Padre Misericordioso has seating for 240 for the S. Silvestro Papa parish, led by Father Gianfranco Corbino. Due to access considerations, the altar was sited on the west side of the church rather than the conventional east side, but the archdiocese seems to have supported this change from tradition. Ing. Ignazio Breccia Fratadocchi of the Office for the Preservation of the Faith and the Construction of New Churches calls Meier's design "a truly welcoming and uplifting place of assembly". The Tor Tre Teste site, almost 110,000 square feet in total, also features a four-storey community centre connected to the church. The centre contains the pastor's residence, parish priest offices, catechism rooms and a meeting hall. A paved walkway, or sagrato, is intended as a natural gathering spot for area residents. Twin high-rise residential buildings, built in the 1970s and home to a quarter of Tor Tre Teste's 30,000 residents, sit next to the new church site. Meier's design is also intended to provide a literal and symbolic reconnection of the suburb to central Rome, six miles to the east.
Although he has two other ecclesiastical projects to his credit in the United States, Dio Padre Misericordioso is Meier's first church design. His best known work is the Getty Center, a complex of six cultural buildings located on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains outside Los Angeles. The Getty complex is clad with 16,000 tons of travertine sourced from quarries at Bagni di Tivoli, which is east of Rome and Tor Tre Teste. Meier has also designed major museums in Frankfurt and Barcelona.
Dio Padre Misericordioso is also Meier's first design project in Italy. Although he cites influences such as Aalto, Le Corbusier and Wright in his own modernist work, he has also expressed a respect for Italian masters. "I have always admired the work of Italy's Baroque masters, especially Gian Lorenzo Bernini's work at St. Peter's and his contemporary Francesco Borromini, particularly for their revolutionary use of light and form," Meier says. The New York architect will get a second opportunity to impress Italians next summer, when his design of Rome's Museum of the Ara Pacis is scheduled for completion. In addition to exhibition areas and an auditorium, the museum, located on the bank of the Tiber, will house an ancient relic and sacrificial altar dating from nine B.C.
Meier's modernist work for the Rome archdiocese marks the first time that a Jewish architect has designed a Roman Catholic church and although he downplays the fact, he acknowledges that "some might say that I am to some degree, a symbolic bridge between faiths". Bridge or not, Meier's design of Dio Padre Misericordioso is certainly helping the Church to sail into the 21st century.

Publication Date: 2003-11-23
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3375