A chapel in brick by Nicolás Campodonico
27/11/2016.
[La Playosa, Córdoba] Argentina
metalocus, ELENA GALLEGO DE VELASCO
metalocus, ELENA GALLEGO DE VELASCO
'To see th einvisible' by Roberto Paoli
Then came at a predetermined moment,
a moment in time and of time,
A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history:
transecting, bisecting the world of time,
a moment in time, but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time but time was made through that moment:
for without the meaning there is no time,
and that moment in time gave the meaning.
T. S. Eliot
Always more frequently concerned about functional and aesthetic issues, we forget that one of the fundamental components of architecture is time. For this reason, the chapel of San Bernardo, completed by the architect Nicolás Campodonico, was erected in the plains in devotion to the patron saint of the place.
A small architecture, lost in the pampa, where time together with light and bricks are the only materials which help us understand deeply the meaning of seeing.
The daily life of the shadows that make up the cross on the dome of the chapel reminds us that the passion, death and resurrection of Christ are not simply "facts" of the past, but something that fills today, making the past present.
A fact happened two thousand years ago becomes an event that re-happens and reaches us today. The meeting of the elements of the cross, the stipes: already solidly planted on the ground, in the place of the torture; and the scaffold: wood carried on the back of the condemned, ineffably and surprisingly renders us contemporaries to the crucifixion of Christ.
'In relation to the absolute there is only one time: the present; for that one who is not contemporary with the absolute, the absolute does not exist'. Kierkegaard observed and his words echo the lines of Pier Paolo Pasolini:
It is only loving, only knowing
that matters, not having loved,
not having known.
In the refined game of lights and shadows on the bricks of the chapel we can see and review their reality, the passion of Christ. It is true that to see it is necessary to recover the simplicity of heart, and many will return home living the experience of emptiness and solitude described by Montale:
...I will turn, I will see the miracle complete:
nothingness at my shoulder, the void behind
me, with a drunkard’s terror.
Then, as on a screen, trees houses hills
will advance swiftly in familiar illusion,
But it will be too late; and I will return, silently,
to men who do not look back, with my secret.
But at this point Saint Bernard can help us, that who at the end of the Divine Comedy implores the Virgin Mary so that Dante could see the invisible without falling into madness, but also the one who wanted the architectures of his monasteries to be stripped of every element that was not static force and light, so that everything had the tenacity of the stone and the clarity of the crystal.
Nicolás Campodonico was born in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina in 1973. He started his studies in Architecture at the National University of Rosario in 1991 and graduated ten years later with a Silver Medal. He obtains a scholarship for the exchange of students with the ETSAV (Valladolid, Spain) and in 1996 he lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. In 1997 he developed and built his first work (Casa en el Campo) and in 2000 established his professional studio in the city of Rosario, where he developed and built works in Argentina and Uruguay.
He participates in numerous national and international competitions obtaining prizes and recognitions in several of them, standing out the Prize CICA to the Young Argentine Architecture (BA2015), the inclusion in the "Panorama of Works" X BIAU Sao Paulo 2016 and VIII BIAU Cadiz 2012, the "First International Mention" at the BAQ Quito 2012 and the "Mention of the Jury" at the SCA CPAU Biennial Award for Architecture Argentina 2008. His works and projects have been published in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Spain and England. He alternates his professional work with teaching, which he has practiced since 1998 in the Faculty of Architecture Planning and Design of the National University of Rosario. He has also collaborated in teaching with the University of Navarra (Spain) and at the IUAV University in Venice.
The development of its projects is essentially a reflection on Place, Matter and Space, immersed in the physical-cultural reality of Latin America.