DÉCIMO SETIMO LIVRO

HALF A DOZEN DISPARATE CHURCHES

"The disused church, which is no longer a place of worship, may become a hospital or a police station or it may be left standing empty, but it still remains essentially itself - a building, a piece of architecture and not a church, as a matter of fact, it never was a church, it was used as a church, just as a poetic or dramatic work may be used, temporarily, as an instrument of propaganda or education or political reeducation- etc.. The powers that be may use it for whatever purpose they please; they cannot stop it being what it is, a living construction, a created work."

Eugène Ionesco

My collection of quite disparate churches begins with some very economical ones.

The mission church of Saint James the Great, Nyamandhlovo, near Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, is a rough and strong church. A building put up easily and for very little money, without being bare and stingy. A building like a sun clock, sunlight changing it throughout the day. First the morning light comes through the light trap at the edge of the altar space behind the lateral pulpit. During the day, bands of sunlight come in through the narrow and tall windows - deep into the chapel and entrance during the winter and as short spots in summer. At sunset the last low sun rays penetrate deeply into the nave through the baptistery window. People come to church mostly in crowds - to worship, to marry, to bury, to be baptised - in trouble and in joy.

I made a building to welcome a crowd and let people in and out easily, instead of the usual clogged bottleneck of masses of people trickling through a mean double front door. Hence the seven doors and the inner entrance space between the seat islands end the baptistery. People must also be able to come alone and find within the big church a smaller space the size of a tow people. The chapel is that space.

I had much trouble with the idea of this church at the beginning Then half of it was what it became. the other half was a space with an off centre fat crossed pillar which became a tree of sticks holding up the roof.

This other idea is waiting in cold storage - deeply frozen but surviving to become another church.

Building come to us before the jobs. Buildings must become habitable —even outside.

The Igreja Metodista Wesliana, the pastor's house and the meeting rooms, near the old Forno Cromatorio, did not fit on the site so the church went upstairs. The building is entered in the centre and the church is reached through a very broad flight of steps. The church space is double storied and roofed by a shallow and distorted pyramid capped by an extract fan box. The church is in the middle of the prostitutes quarter of the town. For me it was always the church of Mary Magdalen.

The Igreja da Sagrada Familia da Machava is a building making signs. It has a plan like a crucifix. It is a church turning into crosses at the extremities and entrances. It is a mommy house surrounded by children in funny hats, wedding hall with a roof like a gondola. This ship of life guarded by four fat two-way crosses, with a side periscope watching over a sea of trees and a round eyed bell box ringing to the four winds, is a house of rolling walls turning into corners, crevices and concavities, for old men in the sun, for hide and seek games, for lovers, for young gangs.

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