The Parish Church of Crist Redemptor is a building annexed to an old parish complex in a popular neighbourhood of Barcelona. It is placed on one side of the existing rooms, delimiting, at the rear, a small interior patio that allows light to enter certain parts of the chapel while at the same time generating a communication space between the old and the new church.
In fitting it into the site, the team of architects decided to set the built volume back a few metres with respect to the alignment of the street to give more space to the passer-by, through a square that refers to the traditional squares of the towns, in which the parishioners gathered after mass. Although this space is currently closed when events are not held in the chapel, it allows the neighbours, accustomed to the winding, small and sloping streets of the neighbourhood, to take a break. A flat square, raised a few metres from the ground to separate itself from noise and daily walking, a meeting place with benches and masonry walls.
The plant is built in a single nave, of an industrial nature, with a porticoed structure in the form of triangulated wooden trusses. The façades and walls are made of traditional earth-coloured brick and the steel finishes, as well as the pillars that support a concrete beam on one side of the chapel, are painted reddish. These sought-after tones provide visual homogeneity to the space.
The roof is sloping to two waters. The finish is carried out with ceramic tile, as it is a local material and in accordance with the materials of the church as a whole. Exceptionally, and to provide overhead light to the interior space, strips of transparent tiles are placed in the centre of the roof to allow light to enter. The entire assembly rests on a wooden board and is insulated with a layer of fiberglass.
It is a church attached to an existing parish complex, located in a uniform urban plot of closed squares. The main concern was to properly locate the building so that it was integrated into its environment but, at the same time, meant as an element of a public nature. The continuous building was interrupted and the church was removed from the alignments to leave a small entrance courtyard, which articulated it with the neighbouring residential blocks and with the existing parish dependencies.
The interior is a clear and easily readable space, without theatricalities or functional specifications, with a structure of wooden trusses as the only characteristic element, which retains some reminiscences of ecclesial typologies, while being expressed according to the traditional forms of the simpler industrial buildings.
