Funerary Chapel

funerARy chapel

Family funerary chapel, Arluno (IT)

Project + realization: 2019-2020

Client: Private

Architect in charge: Arch. Marco Bozzola

Team: Arch. Carlo Mazzeri

Cost: Confidential

Photographs: Andrea Martiradonna, Milano

The realization of a Funerary Chapel raises interest for two main reasons: its smallness (the building has a 4 x 3 mt footprint, due to regulations) and the possibility of reflecting upon the deep significance of burial places and practices starting from a small, if not minimal, dimension.
Building a small place of worship within a larger sacred space means to understand the intimancy of this place, its uniqueness, its dimension, its essence. Starting from the awareness of these features it has been possible to realize this Chapel, capable of combining religion and familiarity, faith and domestic intimancy. It becomes, located in a central position in visiting paths, a totemic and inermost presence, behaving as a desgnative and referential element for the surrounding sacred space, abandoned to weak reference to an almost-clichè past.

Therefore, the image becomes pure, and its compositive language abstract, devoid of any religious reference, apart from a cross, that propagates in all directions, ideally lifting the volume from the ground, making it light, despite the heavy marble surface.

"The compassate purity and weight of marble, immutable and eternal, together with the pure cross of steel, lifting in the sky. It's difficult to imagine an architecture capable of withstanding such a vaste number of meanings in a simple, concise and clear manner... together with a beauty that, notwithstanding any conceptual structure, moves the soul."
This project has been Shortlisted for The Plan Awards 2020 in the Special Projects category.