Abstract
The research carried out in this thesis is focused on the analysis of the fifty-six parish churches built in the city of Barcelona from 1952 to 2000. These buildings were built during the urban expansion that took place in Barcelona, in a time of experimentation and development of new building techniques, like the use of reinforced concrete. Most of the analyzed churches are bigger than the usual buildings built during the same period. New materials and technologies never used before in religious architecture were employed in the building of churches during those years. Churches are facilities, and therefore, public buildings in different neighborhoods of a city carrying out a social activity that has been very important at some points of our history. Parish churches are a core element of the city of Barcelona, through which it is easier to understand the urban and constructive development that took place during the second half of the twentieth century. This is the reason why these buildings have a symbolic value that needs to be known and studied. Parish churches built in the city of Barcelona are good samples of the rest of churches built in Western Europe. However, while Barcelona¿s both secular and religious architecture until 1940 enjoys worldwide recognition, only non-religious buildings from the second half of the twentieth century are well-known. This thesis comes to fill the gap of knowledge in this particular subject. This lack of knowledge is due to the fact that religious architecture is no longer seen as interesting or has become obsolete. However, in the last fifty years, the city of Barcelona has witnessed great architectural achievements in the field of religious architecture from the point of view of both the technique and the design. This study also analyzes the program and design elements that led to all these new parish churches that came from a set of changes in the field of liturgy. During this period not only the way of building, but also the raison d¿être of religious architecture has been put into question. The studies carried out by the liturgical movement shed some light on this topic. From 1952, this movement began to get some approval from the Catholic Church through the publication of the Instruction On Sacred Art of the Congregation of the Holy Office. The discussions about this topic reached its peak during the Second Vatican Council and its subsequent revised liturgical instructions. The book written in 2000 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, expert in the field of liturgy, marks the end of the period of study. This book was issued to remember the most important aspects of the liturgical renewal promoted by Romano Guardini. Building a Christian temple is always an exciting challenge, though sometimes the interest is focused on innovation in shapes and in materials, thus forgetting the cultural background associated to their construction. In order to recover the common language that leads to identify a church as such, it is necessary to pay attention to both the shape of the building and the construction materials used and to learn from previous religious buildings.
