Church and Parish Center Santa Maria Assumpta

Tarragona, Spain

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Church and Parish Center Santa Maria Assumpta

Tarragona, Spain

Firm

Gimeno Guitart

Type

Cultural › Religious

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2016

SIZE

10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft

BUDGET

$1M - 5M

The new Church of Santa Maria Assumpta in Tarragona, emerges as a hard-skinned rock in the urban scene.
The design of the church is articulated around two main ideas:
1- The monument: the church as a collective space must be vindicated as an urban event within the city.
2- The mystery: the church as a place for praying must consider a unique singular space, capable of conveying the idea of transcendence.
The church is complemented with an L-shaped neutral background building that contains complementary program such as: classrooms, offices, or residences, among others. These soft-skinned volumes are located to the North and East of the site, retaining the urban fabric, and freeing the most public corner of the site for the space of the church. The singular shape of the church, as well as the neutral background that frames its visibility and presence in the city reinforce its characteristic materiality and.
With a polyhedric shape that alludes to mineral formations, the near 20-meter high rock manifests itself as a monument within the urban fabric of the city and a symbol for the identity of the Bonavista neighborhood. The presence of the large volume is translated inside as a solid, compact, vertical space. The rock supports the necessary retreat and seclusion for the Catholic ceremony, and the zenith lighting produces a vertical spatial tension, conveying a weightless and spiritual perception. Light, scale, and materiality are the means to reach the experience of the sacred.
The design unveils an austere approach where the intention is the construction of a serene and profound space for the liturgy. The architecture does not participates of stylistic concerns, but attempts to recreate timeless universal values, so as every person, regardless of age or background, may feel embraced by the large family of the parish of Bonavista.