Community on a Journey for a Church that Rises Again

Abstract

The project for the New Parish Complex of the Resurrection in the Varignano district of Viareggio – included in the framework of “Percorsi Diocesani” (Diocesan Paths), of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) – also due to the social and economic complexity of the place where it is located, has greatly insisted on the need to share all the moments of the ideational and constructive process, finding a response among the numerous actors involved: parish, CEI, planners, contractors. Active participation helped to give more shape and concreteness to the design and construction result. The participatory approach favoured the achievement of important results in which the Memory of the community, the style of Sobriety, the look towards the Future and the dimension of Beauty were important cornerstones that made it possible to deliver a new parish complex (on the demolition of the existing one, no longer functional and structurally inadequate) to the new generations within a social, anthropological and interreligious context in continuous evolution. The contribution intends to describe the participatory design process and how the project, by TAMassociati, a Venice firm, was able to enhance the ecclesiological paradigm and the relationship between Church, District and City.