status:
International Design Competition
year:
2009
place:
Ålesund, Norway
client:
Hatlehol Parish
with:
baukuh, Riccardo Antoniazzi and Amedeo Martegnani, Photos by Stefano Graziani
area:
–
description:
The new Hatlehol church is a machine to relate to God.
The church works as a chamber filled with void.
Void detaches gestures from their obvious context. Gestures float into the void in search of new possible relations. The unquestioned development of everyday life is suspended and there is thus space for the appearance of God.
The church produces quiet. Agite otium et agnoscetis quia ego sum Dominus (Ps. 45:11).
The church operates as a machine that collects experiences. Space takes care of gestures, without predicting, without excluding. This is, in the end, the only reason for form: to collect human experiences and to provide actions with dignity, regardless to their immediate goal.
The church avoids establishing a direct link with the content of the religious experience.
The church is not a representation of faith; it is a place in which faith can happen.
The outspoken neoclassicism of the church coincides with its naive futurism. The church is both ancestral and utopian; it is both Pantheon and U.F.O.
