Most installations on display during biennale exhibitions are usually dismantled soon after the closing day. This will not be the case instead for what regards the Vatican Chapels, the Holy See participation at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice (closing tomorrow).
The Holy See took part in the Venice Art Biennale in 2013 and 2015, but this was the first time it joined an architecture biennale.
The participation could be interpreted as the second foray of the Vatican into the secular culture scene this year, following the "Heavenly Bodies" exhibition at the Met Museum.
Like the latter, it was suggested by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture and commissioner of the Holy See Pavilion, known for his interest in opening dialogues between believers and non-believers.
The project consists in 10 chapels built in the wood on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore: the buildings will not be dismantled for the time being, allowing more visitors to walk around them and discover their architectures.
The path starts with an introductory building referencing the 1920 Woodland Chapel by architect Erik Gunnar Asplund (Stockholm, 1885 - 1940) for the cemetery of Stockholm.
Inspired by the gardener's lodge in the park of Liselund (Denmark) which Asplund visited in 1918 during his honeymoon with Gerda Selman, Woodland Chapel suggests a Scandinavian house, but also an archaic temple.
It was a rustic, materic construction with a high roof clad in shingles, inside it was classical and ethereal with a white dome set on eight columns glowing in the light.
"Asplund defined the chapel as a place of orientation, encounter and meditation inside a vast forest, seen as the physical suggestion of the labyrinthine progress of life, the wandering of humankind in the world," curator and architecture historian Francesco Dal Co explains in a statement inside the chapel.
Designed by MAP studio (Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel in collaboration with Alpi), the chapel is dark on the outside and it is covered in 9,000 shakes and shingles of wood that look like dragon scales. The sunlight enters the chapel through a triangular window in the roof.
The space features architectural models and an exhibition of drawings by Erik Gunnar Asplund for several buildings including the Woodland Chapel, Villa Snellman, the Lister County courthouse, the Skandia cinema, the Municipal Library and the Stockholm Exhibition.
The ten chapels scattered around the wood are extremely different one from the other for what regards structures, shapes and materials (and they also differ from any classical and traditional church). Yet there is an element that unifies all the chapels - they all feature an altar and lectern.
For each chapel it is also indicated the name of the company that worked on the building, to highlight the strong bond between design and industry, inviting people to look at the possibilities offered by the various materials and techniques.
Eduardo Souto de Moura's (with Laboratorio Morseletto) chapel is a minimalist and monolithic stone sanctuary enclosed by four thick walls.
The building contrasts with Carla Juaçaba's (with Secco Sistemi) mirrored stainless steel cross rising in the open air, surrounded by benches.
The light chimney-shaped chapel designed by Sean Godsell (with Maeg, Zintek and Nice) seems inspired by industrial style.
The chapel features opening flaps on four sides and a steel framed tower covered inside in bright gold zintek. The most striking feature about this structure is the fact that it can be easily be re-packed at any time and relocated to another place.
Chilean architect Smiljan Radić (with Moretti and Saint-Gobain Italia) came up with a cylindrical concrete structure with a wooden door hung at an angle and a bubblewrap-like texture on the interior walls.
Light is a key feature of Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores' (with Saint-Gobain Italia) terracotta-toned "Morning Chapel" designed to capture and channel the first sunlight of the day down to the altar.
Andrew Berman (with Moretti and Terna) interpreted the light/darkness dichotomy via two materials - translucent polycarbonate sheets (for the exterior) and black painted plywood (for the interior) - and added only one seat in his shed-like chapel, positioning it in front of a lectern and under a beam of light, to symbolise the human condition suspended between hope and desperation.
There's a modern form of futuristic Renaissance in the simple and clean (yet maybe cold) lines of Francesco Cellini's (with Panariagroup) chapel with its intersecting volumes, a pulpit and an altar.
Japan-based architect Teronobu Fujimoro (with Barth Interni and LignoAlp) designed instead a warm cabin-like chapel with a charred timber exterior, a shingle floor surface and interior walls decorated with flecks of charcoal.
This structure is a humble shed that invites quiet prayer and meditation and can be accessed through a symbolic narrow door.
Javier Corvalàn (with Simeon) played with the circle and with perceptions: his circular steel chapel is covered in a wood panel and anchored to the ground via one column that allows the structure to remain suspended in the air.
The design gives the impression the wood is dynamically wrapped around the structure, a perception strengthened by the shape of the wooden cross inside the church, characterised by multiple arms.
Norman Foster chose Tecno to build his chapel: the architect and the Italian furniture company go a long way back as they have collaborated together for decades, developing products such as the iconic Nomos table and the interior architecture of the British Museum in London, among the other projects.
Norman Foster's chapel consists in a steel floor with a timber deck and a tensegrity structure made of steel masts and cross-arms supporting a wooden lattice (originally it was supposed to be made in fabric, like a tent) covered in jasmine vines. The view from the chapel is beautiful as the altar area opens onto the lagoon.
"Our project started with the selection of the site," Norman Foster explains about the location of the chapel in a press release.
"On a visit to San Giorgio Maggiore, close to Palladio's magnificent church and the Teatro Verde, we found a green space with two mature trees beautifully framing the view of the lagoon. It was like a small oasis in the big garden, perfect for contemplation. Our aim was to create a small sanctuary space diffused with dappled shade and removed from the normality of passers-by, focused instead on the water and sky beyond."
Foster's chapel is better experience after visiting all the other chapels since it seems to be the logical conclusion to this walk among the woods that can be interpreted as a spiritual itinerary of faith or as a way to meditate far away from the madding crowds of Venice and regain a much needed peace of mind immersed in nature and with a view over the lagoon.
The Vatican Chapels path is indeed designed for everybody, believers and non-believers (like the architects who designed them - Godsell was educated by Jesuits; Cellini is a non-believer). There may be crosses in some of these spaces, but they are not conceived as deliberately Catholic, but as universal (Cardinal Ravasi seems more interested in dialogues than in actually building walls and proselytising...).
These chapels can therefore be interpreted as multi-generational meeting places for a contemporary humanity, as ways to rediscover forms of unconventional beauty and think more about the quality of life rather than about material needs. It may be difficult to find spaces for contemplation and reflection in Venice, where you often feel trapped among crowds of tourists and haunted by the masked ghost of the Carnival, yet here it is possible to discover that the essence of life is not to be found in the most crowded and noisy spaces, but it is somewhere else, maybe hovering over the lagoon or hiding deep in our hearts.
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