Fruit of a plan of urban requalification intended to reintegrate the abandoned industrial areas of the 1870s into the urban fabric, the building offers a new urban quality. The complex includes the church, the parish buildings serving the new community, the offices of the City Curia, the necessary parking facilities and a conference centre. The church has an heptameter-shaped base surrounded by seven towers to which are added the lower bodies of the chapels, whose truncated tops also function as skylights and let the natural light streaming in along the walls. The heptagonal plan has made it possible to orient the inner hall according to an entrance-altar axis in the direction of the city. Inside, the pyramid-shaped roof embraces the wide hall and through the alternation of solids and voids generates a suggestive play of light and shadow in the central space. Following the clients’ requests, the architect and his collaborators reconstructed the face of Jesus through a skilful interweaving of stone worked with two different forms and mounted so as to have a wedge side to create shadows and a flat side to reflect the light. The smokestack from the former steelworks has been kept and renovated as the symbol of work and workers’ culture. It is encircled by a spiralling structure in stainless steel that rises from the parvis to the cross set at over sixty metres from the ground. The bells are small and are mounted at the base of the tower on a rectangular frame next to the main entrance.
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