Last semester, during one of my courses at the University of Brighton, I had to choose what I thought was an iconic building of the '60s-'70s and write a 3000 word essay on it. My choice fell straight away on a church that I had passed in front of several times and had always caught my eye but I had never had the chance to visit it or learn more about it: the church of S. Giovanni Battista, better known as the Chiesa sull'Autostrada, located at the junction between the Autostrada del Sole and the Firenze-Mare highway on the outskirts of Florence. So, during my Christmas break I went to visit it and was litteraly left without words. The Architect, Giovanni Michelucci, wanted everything in the structure to be alive, to breathe in a continuous movement and changing with the wind, the light and all climate changes..and he sure did it!
"The church was designed with the Autostrada foremost in mind, forming a continuum with the road network so as to suggest the need for a natural break. As a result it led Michelucci to conceive of a building without an end that would form a meeting place for travelers, so that the building's conformation would allow, suggest and be the cause of the opportunity for meeting: this was important for Michelucci in stimulating introspection and an understanding of man's place in society. In this sense it could be argued that Michelucci's idea of the church was not exactly the house of God's people but rather the house of all men, irrespective of their religion. The many allusions and the biblical symbolism translate from abstractions in tangible give the work a density and a plurality of meanings through its walls, pillars and roof."
(taken from my essay)
The last two pictures were taken in Fiesole, at the Fondazione Michelucci.
All photos taken with my Olympus E-520 + Zuiko 14-42 mm and 40-150 mm in December 2010.
