area 112 | beauty of built

architect: Tabuenca&Leache Arquitectos

location: Pamplona, Spain

year: 2008

The building is fruit of a public aid summoned by the Archbishopric in 2000. The important thing was to solve the old aspiration of San Jorge’s neighbourhood of Pamplona to tell on a worthy religious dowry which they had been waiting for, for over thirty years. The program consisted in the construction of a church for 400 people with a little chapel for its use during the week. The parochial centre was completed with offices, rooms for different uses, classrooms for catechesis, two houses for the priests and a small apartment for visits. The city-planning anticipated the implantation of the building in the centre of a space surrounded by housing buildings that reach heights of up to eight plants. An anodyne situation that was difficult to fight. This location divides the square in two semi-squares. The relation with these squares and their connection was the strongpoint at the time of projecting the building.
The church perpendicularly rises to the main avenue of the district following the sequence by which they accompany it, assuming therefore rules that help to occupy their location with naturalness and discretion. An ample vestibule acts as of outer lobby, putting in relation the mentioned squares, adds an interesting urban episode for whom simply crosses it, and serves as point of contact and concentration like previous step to the entering of the temple connecting this at the same time with the parochial center. In this last one, the houses of the priests have been located in the upper floor. A raised court that crosses all the length of the facade allows illuminating them without privacy matters. Three pieces (vestibule, temple and parochial center) that are melted in one and unique image confer to the set a certain character of a church fortress that tries to defend from its surroundings, but also to create a back drop curtain as a contrast with the environment.
The inside of the temple is in the same way solved of in a succinct way of its forms and materials, being its constructed concrete walls same that the exteriors. This building unit allows the light to be the fundamental the necessary concentration for the celebration of the cult and the prayers. At the foot of the church an alabaster window sifts the light that enters from the vestibule.
On the presbytery, a lucernario allows to illuminate with greater intensity the liturgical elements. A great concrete girder screen divides the lateral aisle in two spaces, the main and widest one for Sunday celebrations and the smallest for its use as a small chapel.

Fernando Tabuenca González (Pamplona, 1960) is a graduate of the University of Architecture of Navarra. He received his training in the architecture firm of Luis Tabuenca in Pamplona (1979-1984) and in that of Rafael Moneo in Madrid (1984-1986). He has received his PhD in Madrid and has also done complementary studies with grants in Santander, Parigi, Siena and Chicago. He has taught architectural planning at the University of Navarra, the Polytechnicof Madrid (1991-95) and the JF Kennedy University of Buenos Aires (1995). Jesús Leache Resano (Pamplona, 1962) is a graduate of the University of Architecture of Navarra and has been an independent professional since 1987. In 1993 they founded “abuenca & Leache, Arquitectos”. Their works have been published in specialized books and magazines. In Navarro they are the authors of the covered pelota court, the Urroz Villa square, the local police station at Tudela, a number of subsidized housing units at Berriozar and the new architectural image of the Caja Navarra. They have just completed the parish of San Jorge and the renovation of the palazzo of the “Condestable” in Pamplona.