Client: Parish Santa Maria and Diocese Ascoli Piceno
Location: Castel di Lama, Ascoli Piceno
Contest: 2008
Construction: parish works: 2010; church: 2018
Architectural design: Marco Contini Construction
Director of works: Marco Contini
Collaborators: Alessio Brugnoli, Matteo Mascia, Matteo Zaccarelli
Structures and systems: Studio Di Emidio
Liturgical aspects: Don Mario Cataldi
Artistic works: Giuliano Giuliani
Pastors: Don Nazareno Gaspari, Don Luigi Nardi
Type of intervention: new construction
Functional characteristics: new community centre with church, parish services and sports area
Area: 17,500 sq.m.
Contractor: Gabriele Gaspari
Facade and windows: Enzo Reschini
Velarium: Extenzo
Photographs: Domenico Oddi, Gianmarco Corvaro
Result of a competition in 2006, the project develops the idea of a rootedness to the place of the building structures through the volumetric arrangement and the use of local materials, relating to the inhabited area with pedestrian paths that cross the space of the churchyard that widens into the large garden square.
The building dedicated to worship is characterized on the outside by the large façade in travertine slabs used as a filter to glimpse the interior spaces of the church.
The interior houses a large elliptical suspended velarium, a place of assembly and space for the liturgy. The liturgical places, baptismal font, ambo, altar, seat, crucifix and tabernacle are arranged along a path that crosses longitudinally the presbyterial space and ends in a garden where an olive tree has been placed.
The disposition of the assembly interprets the dictates of the Vatican Council according to, with the presbyterial area surrounded by the sessions of the faithful forming the substance of becoming “Church”. The altar and the ambo are placed frontally in the two fires of the ellipse to emphasize the equal dignity of the table and the word.
Inside the church, the magnificent travertine works of art by Giuliano Giuliani define in a spiritual way the places of the liturgy.
