Catholic Church | EPFL Graph Search

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization. The church consists of 24 sui iuris churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The bishopric of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small enclave of the Italian city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic

“The open Church”.Réaffectation des églises de la Gruyère

Niels Ange Fantini

«The future belongs to the church with the broadest doors.» [Klahr, G.] Le projet est une démonstration du potentiel de réassignation des églises rurales. Il concrétise les idées développées dans notre énoncé théorique, “The closed Church”, qui posait les bases d'une réflexion sur le devenir des lieux de culte sous-exploités des campagnes d'Europe occidentale. En considérant la diminution de la pratique cultuelle et les coûts d'entretien élevés, cette analyse interrogeait la désaffection programmée des constructions religieuses à une échelle élargie du territoire. En appliquant les stratégies formulées dans notre étude, nous avons considéré les vingt-deux églises et chapelles de la vallée de la Gruyère comme une situation générique. Le projet veut faire la démonstration, sous forme d'un catalogue, du potentiel de réaffectation de neuf de ces vingt-deux constructions sélectionnées, en fonction de leurs variétés typologiques, dimensionnelles et contextuelles. Par l'application d'une grande variété de programmes, les projets proposés permettent de prendre conscience des véritables potentiel spatiaux, lumineux, matériels et symboliques des lieux de culte. A travers ces réflexions, deux propositions programmatiques sont développées à une échelle plus détaillée: l'une est une distillerie collective autogérée et la seconde est un impluvium à usage culturel.

2017

The invention of the Swiss house: engineers, ethnographers and artists to the discovery of the Alpine vernacular construction / L’invenzione della casa svizzera: ingegneri, etnografi e artisti alla scoperta della costruzione vernacolare alpina

Nicola Braghieri

At the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, Switzerland presented itself to the world by exhibiting an imaginary synthetic village, making the conflicting features of the various Cantons – which for a few decades gathered under the flag of the Confederation – the founding elements of its national identity. These features were based on the cultural core of the “idem Alpine feeling” defined by the primitive cantons of Alemannic language, Catholic religion, and mountain economy. Not being able to express an authentic image by drawing on the nation’s historicized heritage, the focus is on popular architecture. The Alpine House has built and nurtured a resilient narrated “myth” which, in its architectural form of “chalet” typical of the Bernese Oberland, has helped feed a generalist image of considerable pro-motional and commercial success for Switzerland and its industry. In the twentieth century, during the industrial growth of the nation, campaigns of survey and inventory of the rural and bourgeois “heritage” tried to scientifically systematize the heterogeneous disciplinary approaches that had undertaken the interpretation of the Alpine house in the previous century. Social, economic, and cultural functions are the raison d’être of the vernacular construction and are expressed in the lexicon of typological, constructive, and decorative elements. The specific linguistic and cultural affiliations translate not only into different materials, techniques, and forms of construction but also into different settlement models in the territory. An unwavering mythology has been built and, paradoxically, the national identity has been modelled on the assumption that Germans are “assemblers” of logs, and Latins are “builders” who use stone.

2021

Chiese provvisorie. Identità sospesa

Chiara Monterumisi

This book is the result of a choral participation (School of Doctorate Studies in Architecture, University of Bologna and Laboratorio “Ricerca Emilia”) in the exhibition entitled “Architetture padane”. It is also the second step of wider investigation focused on the Emilia region, which sadly it has been the centre of a serious earthquake on the May 2012. Both book and exhibition are in debt with the significant exhibition - “Architetture padane”- set by Aldo Rossi and the photographer Luigi Ghirri about some architect’s projects conceived an evident Padan character (Casa del Mantegna, Mantua, 1984). The importance of that experience laid in Rossi’s capability of entirely comprehending the main features of that territory, so that he pointed out as a merging balance with countryside and city as well as ground and water. Starting from these facets the purpose of the book is to firmly stress the key role of the identity and culture of those places in the process of reconstruction after the natural disaster. The three main sections, respectively “Landscape and history”, “Destruction” and “Emergency”, described the line of the research. The task of the author was to gather some recent projects on building new temporary churches in those fragile territories. Maquettes and drawings of the projects were displayed in the exhibition. Parallel to that, the contribution in the book underlines how the predominantly flat skyline of Padan plain has always been characterized by the presence of bell towers, that together with churches are clear expression of local identity. Few minutes later the earthquake we have lost both the buildings and that not physical entity that is the identity.

CLUEB2013

Nicola Braghieri

2021