The Church of Las Chumberas, in the Tenerife municipality of La Laguna and designed by the architect Fernando Menis, will receive in the United States the international award for Religious Art and Architecture Faith & Form, which since 1978 has been convened by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
A prize that is awarded to honor the best in sacred architecture and liturgical art of all the world’s religions, is indicated in a statement that adds that the awards ceremony will take place on June 23 in Chicago, during the AIA national convention.
During the first decade of this century, the then chief curator of architecture at the New York Museum of Art (MoMA), Barry Bergdoll, visited the works of the Iglesia del Santísimo Redentor de Las Chumberas, and decided to include the project in the permanent collection. of the MoMa.
Since then this church has received recognition in Japan as well as in India, China, Germany, Italy and the United States.
The statement indicates that the construction of the Church of the Santísimo Redentor, undertaken by the Bishopric of Tenerife, has overlapped with the process of transforming the neighborhood of Las Chumberas, a polygon of 670 homes from the 70s, organized in 42 blocks to which shopping centers and industrial buildings were added.
Supported by the Bishopric of Tenerife, as well as by sponsors and neighbors, Fernando Menis proposed the church as a necessary welcoming catalyst for the urban and social changes that were taking place in the neighbourhood.
In his vision, the new building had to create a place where there was none and contribute to giving Las Chumberas a greater identity of its own, establishing itself as a reference space in a previously confused urban fabric.
The construction is a church that includes a parish center and a public square surrounded by greenery, that is, a public meeting place.
Also, according to the statement, it is an example of collective action since the financing of the works has been made through donations from various organizations, many neighbors and some businessmen committed to the neighborhood that saw them born and grow (the most generous donation comes from the businessman Ambrose Jimenez).
The unequal rhythm of remittances is in fact what has determined the constructive logic of the project and its subsequent execution: a complex made up of four independent modules plus their surroundings, which has been delivered in phases.
The parish center, housed in two of the four volumes of the complex, was completed in 2008 and has been in use ever since while waiting to raise the necessary funds for the rest of the work, which is now ending.
In this church, as in other works of his such as the CKK Jordanki Culture, Music and Congress Hall in Torun (Poland), or the Magma Art and Congress Center in Adeje (Tenerife), Menis experiments with the acoustic potential of concrete, which it is “unfairly” considered acoustically inferior to other materials, such as wood.
