Barcelona New Church | Jon Tugores

Barcelona New Church, image courtesy of Jon Tugores

Spanish architect Jon Tugores recently has designed a new contemporary church located in Barcelona, Spain. 2 distinct glass boxes designed to symbolize between the city and the sky.

+ Project description courtesy of Jon Tugores

Designing the project of a church without using traditional and rhetorical arguments that are easily understood by the public, was our first step of a script that made us take a sharper road.  An evangelist church has a physical difference with a catholic one. It somehow becomes a poli-programmatic space. In fact most of the surface is dedicated to unknown program that evolves according to time and/or necessities. We decided to create an object, an abstract element, non standard, with an immediate urban interpretation, that doesn’t acknowledge what’s going on with the variable interior. This object, have way through poetry and a structural challenge, has to impose itself via image, and not via program.

We’ve created an ATRACTOR, a self communicating building. A virtual LIGHT-HOUSE. A building that QUESTIONS the user.

Jon Tugores

SOLUTION

Although we designed a church that doesn’t look like one, we did want to go down to basic formal concepts for the church to communicate.

Barcelona New Church, image courtesy of Jon Tugores

2 LIGHT BOXES

The BLACK-BOX

A dark, semi-reflective glass box, born from ground level, creates a reflection of the incoming user with a theatrical background of the city, as the pedestrian gets closer to the black facade he sees himself bigger as the city gets smaller, it disappears into the black (black as things that appear in cities…), It’s that moment when the user questions his behaviour, wishes, etc…

The program it encloses is the main space for the church, a bar and also an exterior garden directly connected to the building via three different ways.

The entrance to the building is through a continuation of the street with a street-look a like hall.

Barcelona New Church, image courtesy of Jon Tugores

The LIGHT-BOX / Suspended virtual cloud

An elevated pure white box, a poetical way of saying ‘here we are’ without obvious predictable formalities. As a background element we find the sky. Easy.

The white glass illuminated box symbolizes the untouchable, the life theoretical guideline, a least as we occidentals see it. The program is variable depending upon needs. This part is the most reluctant to be changed in time  that’s why its structure free.

Barcelona New Church, image courtesy of Jon Tugores

THINK TANK media-space

The in-between space is dedicated to thinking, analyzing, proposing, reading, listening, internal searching.

Protected from the rain and direct sunshine.

The upper terrace is also an active surface where anybody can go to read the city, connect your labtop, see film or practice some kind of sport. A Proof of self-gaining, a supernatural feeling of superiority.

Barcelona New Church, ground floor plan courtesy of Jon Tugores

Barcelona New Church, 1st floor plan courtesy of Jon Tugores

Barcelona New Church, 2nd floor plan courtesy of Jon Tugores

Barcelona New Church, roof plan courtesy of Jon Tugores

Barcelona New Church, section courtesy of Jon Tugores

+ Project credits / data

Project: New Church
Location: Barcelona, Spain.
Architect: Jon Tugores + Partnes
Contributors: Mika Utzon (Cloud polyphonic)
Structure: BOMA (Brufau, Obiol Moya)
Computing Facilities: RG Engineering
Acoustic: Aldovier
Project: 2009
Contest: 2007
Construction Start: September 2009
Photo: Jon Tugores

+ All images and drawings courtesy of Jon Tugores