Contemporary

Architecture-
(RAFAEL MONEO-
PHILOSOPHY)

Submitted by
Shriya Agrawal
M.Arch 1st year
F.O.A , LUCKNOW
Jose Rafael Moneo Valleys (born 9 May 1937) is a Spanish Architect.
-He is considered one of the most architect of our tune focus on three
different fear.
-built many projects in Europe and Unites States.
-He says that Architecture does not happen in time .Time happens in
Architecture .
-Known for design of public buildings-Meera Foundation (1987-1992),.
Philosophy
To built means to intervene in the environment in the landscape in which we live in as
much as to construct a building.
Rafael Moneo on the Arbitrariness of Architecture-
Has to do creation of a place .
Has to do with a creation of how landscape with a building itself and
establishes a prominent public space .The building is comprise of parts-
-Prismatic Volume which serves as the entrance , public spaces and host the
Research Labs, the library and small auditions.
-Sharp and intense , the volume ignores its surroundings or better still,
Answers with rage the hostile buildings that have worn down the previously
beautiful slope
Some of his Works are
Iesu Church, San Sebastian, Spain by Rafael Moneo
 Residential development hugs the banks of the Urumea River,
and Loiola is a neighbouring suburb, not a stream.
It feels vacant and anonymous, Moneo designed an
understated composition of white cubes for the parish center
and church, with a basement supermarket to provide income
and guarantee that this becomes a point of focus for the
entire neighbourhood.
A Basque firm, Lur Paisajistak, won a competition for the
adjoining park, but Moneo wove them together with his curvilinear
landscaping in the plaza to the north.

Plan ground floor

In an essay titled Architecture as a vehicle for religious experience,
Moneo described the paradigm shift from the medieval concept of a
church as the House of God, to the Renaissance emphasis on the
individual and the private realma change that has accelerated in
recent decades.
The architect, facing the challenge of building a church or temple,
cannot rely on a shared vision, but instead must risk offering his or
her own version of sacred space, he wrote.
He and his fellow priests wanted a church that provided the
faithful with a space that allowed them to express their religious
feelings without interference, the architect recalled. The purer the
form and the less conventional iconography, the better. I very much
wanted to serve their wishes.
 Outside View Iesu Church, San Sebastian, Spain
by Rafael Moneo
From the outside, the building is enigmatic. The lofty church is
rotated ten degrees to the hollow rectangle of the parish centre,
and projects into the park. Concrete blocks, faced inside and out
with a white cement mortar that resists airborne pollutants, rise
from a stone-clad base along the street wall.
To the east, a cut-out cross in the roof parapet identifies the church
and a scarlet sign marks the sunken entry to the supermarket; the
symbolism of God rising above Mammon is rather too obvious.
Oak grilles enclose the entry concourse that runs parallel to the
street and an opening that lights it, projecting a grid of sun and
shade. Beyond the landscaped patio are a meeting room, parish
offices, and upper level apartments.
This low-key approach heightens the drama of the worship space: an
irregular Greek cross, defined by the angled walls of the baptistery,
sacristy, and chapels that occupy four corners of the square. Three
blocks of pews and the deep sanctuary are bathed in natural light
from the same roof lanterns that light the meditation chapel above
the sacristy and the other three corner chapels. The light defines the
central cross and articulates the spaces between open and enclosed
volumes.
 Sectional Elevation

Radical shifts of height give each chapel a distinct character: one

ascends 23 meters above the low-ceilinged sacristy; the others rise
7, 11 and 27 meters above the black basalt floor. An organ gallery
offers another perspective on a volume.
Moneo has created inefficient space as it was defined by Le
Corbusier .When a work reaches a maximum of intensity, when it
has reached perfection . It belongs to the domain of the ineffable.
 Reference
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/sp
ain/articles/rafael-moneo-an-
architect-in-context/