ARCHITECTURE

NEW PRESBYTERY

How can you show what cannot be seen with the naked eye? How can you present the immaterial in real terms? How can you experience a sense of holiness in a material world?

THE IDEA – REVELATION – IMPORTANCE – FORM

The idea. Plato’s concept of the Idea touches on metaphysics and defines it as immaterial existence that does not directly concern us. Ideas are intangible assets. They exist beyond the reality in which we live; they occupy a separate sphere. They are eternal and immovable. In all other respects they constitute a perfect existence. The world of ideas is constructed hierarchically. At its very tip is the idea of goodness and beauty.

You can only show this idea through the elaborate, original and unexpected concept on which architecture is based, both in terms of design and content.

Revelation. In the Catholic faith, revelation concerns the meeting of a personal (tangible) God who appears as Creator and Saviour, inviting selected, individual people, or a group, such as the twelve Apostles, in order to invite, through them, all the other people to become children of God, people of God.

The illustration of the proper importance of the presented, tangible architectural forms through its content.

Importance. In general terms, this is the concept that combines what we register with our senses and connect with a certain symbol. The character, sentence, shape, gesture or sound are not important, if they do not refer to what is known to us.

The proper understanding of signs and symbols is a way of understanding the principal idea.

Form. In the field of art, this refers to those properties that are related to the shape (e.g., sculpture, architecture), construction (arrangement) of a record (e.g. architecture, poetry, novel, music). Having no direct impact on the work of art, the form, however, decides on the choice of how a work of art is recorded and transferred to the recipient.

The form is the visual shape of the content – such an interpretation was presented by the painter Ben Shahn. However, Rudolf Arnheim claimed: Seeing the shape, always consciously or unconsciously, we are satisfied that this shape represents something and, therefore, that it is a form of content. Thus, according to the other definition, the form is what directly comes from your senses – we see or hear the form and, thanks to it, we interpret the meaning of the work of art. To illustrate, for poetry, it is the sound of words that creates its form while their meaning is the content. For architecture, the shape is the form, while the arrangement and mutual interaction between elements create the content.
The competent inclusion of the content in the form is very important and, at the same time, extremely difficult. The expression of the idea and symbolism in relation to the church is a particular challenge also due to its very essence, the sense of which is symbolism and faith.