O espaço do sagrado

Abstract

This essay is part of a research work entitled "The Sacred in Modern Architecture" presented in 2003 to the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Valladolid, Spain. This work aimed at describing and structuring a reading of Le Courbusier's Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, located in Ronchamp, and Tadao Ando's Church on the Water, within the critical theory of architecture. From the analysis of different formal grammars and the articulation with a tension evident in each of chapels, I intended to stess different sensitibities, visions, and cultural understandings on how to design, feel and live the space of the Sacred. Finally, this essay tried to underline the need to free architecture from the impersonal logic of the market by rethinking it as a body that, in order to convey any emotions, must also have a soul.