SANTI FRANCESCO E CATERINA CHAPEL IN ROME

About This Project

The chapel placed inside the Foudation’s Center, represents an important ‘joint’ for the complex: it is a place dedicated to meditation and personal prayer, a space intended to take a rest in the daily routine or to celebrate functions for small groups. The multi-purpose aim requires to arrange a suited space, both in architectural and liturgical terms. The sense of centrality that emerges inside the sacred space is not mainly due to to the plan design, as much as to the visual axiality that drives the sequence of the ambo, the altar and the cross, along the diagonal from the entrance to the apse. The assembly of the faithful seats around the poles, wraps the core of celebration and suggests the image of a gathering. The glazing towards the foyer is meant as a frame to observe the chapel from the connective space, as well the glazing towards the patio allows to admire a tiny natural corner outside. Liturgical signs share a common language that makes them stand out like sculptures, to be seen from different angles. Materic expression emerges in the middle of the scene (the altar and the ambo), and also on the walls around (tabernacle and statue of the Virgin).