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Itineraries Through Milan's Architecture

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Itineraries Through Milan's Architecture ORDINE DEGLI ARCHITETTI, FONDAZIONE DELL’ORDINE DEGLI ARCHITETTI, PIANIFICATORI, PAESAGGISTI E CONSERVATORI PIANIFICATORI, PAESAGGISTI E CONSERVATORI DELLA PROVINCIA DI MILANO DELLA PROVINCIA DI MILANO /types Form, function, meaning in architecture Churches and Modernity Marco Borsotti Itineraries through Milan’s architecture Modern architecture as a description of the city “Itineraries through Milan’s architecture: Modern architecture as a description of the city” is a project of the Order of Architects Planners Landscape Architects and Conservators of the Province of Milan and its Foundation. Scientific Coordinator: Maurizio Carones Managing director: Paolo Brambilla Editorial staff: Alessandro Sartori, Stefano Suriano General Manager: Giulia Pellegrino Press Office: Ferdinando Crespi “Churches and Modernity” Marco Borsotti Edited by: Alessandro Sartori, Stefano Suriano on the back cover: L. Figini e G. Pollini, Church of Ss. Giovanni e Paolo, section, 1964-1968, © Archivio CSAC di Parma, Fondo Figini e Pollini The Foundation of the Order of Architects can be contacted regarding any unidentified rights for visual materials. www.ordinearchitetti.mi.it www.fondazione.ordinearchitetti.mi.it Churches and Modernity in Milan Marco Borsotti The very essence of creating Architecture — the act of translating significance into volume, preserving and communicating meaning with clarity — inseparably links its history to a building typology as special and unique as a church, where precisely sign and meaning take on their absolute values, expressed in representational, symbolic and functional form. Here, the process of imagining space must set itself the objective of consciously interpreting an architectural object in its perceptual dimension, in its ability to provide tangible links between the act of becoming a place and the people who will experience it, uniting form and content with the very principle of its own existence, rendered understandable and available to the individual as well as to the community as a whole. Sacred buildings, therefore, call humanity unto themselves, asking us to receive their form and then summoning us back once again in an attitude of welcome: a house, for God and for humanity. So, since the church-building corresponds to a community’s deep- seeded and intimate needs to identify a sacred place with a sense of transcendence, architecture is presented with the difficult task of becoming both a language for and the interpretation of the values associated with the nature of religious feelings. The highly delicate task that confronted modern architecture, therefore, was not only to interpret a religious building’s civic purpose, but also its ideological role. Modern architecture always faced the reality of its day (along with its attendant changes) at times as a forerunner, at others as a consequence. This is especially true in urban areas, where changes are a faster and more complex phenomenon related to the abandonment and renewal of various models — architectural, social, economic — and modes — of life and relationships, but also, more technically, of construction and CHURCHES AND MODERNITY technology. The response is an uninterrupted journey in search of fulfilling architecture’s ethical nature, which, especially in the poetic silence of form, summons the ability to evoke transcendental values, where the preeminence of the interior — the final embrace of any personal experience of the transcendental — is a testament to an understanding of the meaning of matter, to the balance between lightness and gravity, and the intimate dialogue with light, an immaterial material able to exalt and define space. After the end of the second World War, Milano had to immediately confront the dramatic urgency of rebuilding a city that had been semi-destroyed. Almost simultaneously, pressures resulting from the phenomenon of intense urbanisation, tied to a very real internal mass migration, also required attention. Furthermore, these reconstruction efforts also included mending the social fabric, focusing on places of collective value, recognisable signs and references where a new common identity could be redrawn. Within this general framework and its subsequent development — and consistent with the logic of difference that all great personalities bring to their missions and common endeavours — one of the traces of greater continuity that characterised the pastoral activities of the Cardinals in the line of leadership of the great Diocese of Milan from the first post-war period till today — Ildefonso Schuster, Giovanni Battista Montini, Giovanni Colombo, Carlo Maria Martini e Dionigi Tettamanzi — is the very careful and attentive focus on the value of architecture as a reference for territorial identification and a tangible sign of the community’s presence. As Cecilia De Carli wrote, Cardinal Schuster is to thank for, “the intuition of structurally tying the construction of the building-church to the growth of the city, connecting it organically — with the invention of the “Office of New Temples” in 1948 — to the city’s Urban Development Plan” (De Carli, 1994). (1) It was an historical period in which the theme of sacred architecture was measuring itself against that which had taken root elsewhere, ever since the twenties and especially abroad, particularly in Switzerland, France and Germany. It was a time of deep, new reflections on the meaning of spaces devoted to religion and on what form they should take within the Christian liturgy. This debate centred on the very essence of the meaning expressed by this rite and of the renewed ways in which it related to the faithful, breathing life into the fundamental concept of assembly in the “House of God and of men.” It is a complex path , which in the CHURCHES AND MODERNITY years of the Second Vatican Council, will lead to a major reform that will pose a difficult challenge to architecture: to demonstrate and exemplify the ability to tune into and adapt to a different idea — more participatory and unifying — about the relationship between space and faith. The process will spur the conception of renewed ecclesial types, in a long and difficult search that continues to this day and that, among other things, immediately re-established the association with the arts. As an historical premise of this process, there was Quickborn, a Catholic Youth Movement in Germany that was formed in 1920 around the intense figures of Romano Guardini, a master of thought and one of the leading spiritual leaders in the century, and Rudolf Schwarz, a young architect capable of making the language of Modern architecture a means of understanding, implementation and renewal of the liturgy itself. The writings of the latter, together with his built works, as well as those of another great architect Emil Steffann, anticipated and gave the force of objective support to the arguments that were addressed and defined by the Second Vatican Council. “It was undoubtedly inevitable that the “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” (1963) and the “Roman Education” that specified its applications (1964), would be reflected in ecclesiastical buildings in a pragmatic way, through a simple functional readjustment of the places of worship. For the most part, the bishops certainly weren’t imagining anything more. While almost unanimously ratifying the theology of the Assembly and the mystery of its unity, they had in mind (…) a monumental and representative image (…), but the theological underpinnings of the Assembly brought with it many changes that were much more decisive. Bringing its considerable weight to bear on the issue, it envisioned a form of worship that would be entirely dedicated to serving the living community (…); hospitality would take precedence over monumentality and the person would come before the object itself ” (2). Postwar Milan, with an abundance of architects who had been pursuing and exploring the language of modern architecture, quickly became a place for experimenting with the design of sacred places that would be adapted to the new times, finding many points of contact between the reforms that will come and the tradition of the Ambrosian rite. In particular, a figure like Gio Ponti — as at ease in the fields of architecture and industrial design as he was working on interiors or on an urban scale — combined the prestige of a CHURCHES AND MODERNITY confirmed designer with an openly-declared Catholic upbringing that he repeatedly described as being an inspirational muse to his profession, a notion expressed in articles written under the heading, ‘Architecture Religion.’ “There are still no other works from other sources of inspiration that have surpassed the heights and power of those of sacred inspiration (…)” (3). Synthesising such a long and interesting history, so full of great episodes, is obviously not easy. Every architect and designer in this survey possessed an extraordinary design sensitivity, allowing them to successfully address such a difficult architectural and social issue, bringing rich, new elements to the canon. For this itinerary, a few examples have been chosen that are, each and every one, capable of immediately transmitting an understanding of the numerous themes comprising the Modern interpretation of ‘sacred’, with the certainty that the “diversity” that distinguishes each architect can spontaneously speak to us not only about his personal history and his vision of architecture, but also, and above all, about the many facets that combine to make up the Modern idea of a church. Places that have been both fields of experimentation — at times even daring and extreme, like the bareness of the Figini and Pollini’s pared-down, essential language — and consolidated certainties — light as a “construction” material in De Carli’s work; places that have been handed down to us today as the real lessons of architecture and fundamental reference points for all who wish to continue their journey. MARCO BORSOTTI (1) C. De Carli, “1945-1963 il tema architettonico della chiesa negli episcopati di Schuster e Montini”, p. 39 in C. De Carli (edited by), Le nuove chiese della Diocesi di Milano 1945-1993, Vita e pensiero, Milano, 1994. (2) F. Debuyst, “Architettura e liturgia.
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