Il piccolo nel grande, il grande nel piccolo. Gli adeguamenti liturgici di Culotta e Leone The small in the big, the big in the small. Culotta and Leone’s liturgical adaptations

An exploration of the liturgical adaptations of Culotta Pasquale and Giuseppe Leone leads to understand how their reflection on architecture for the Catholic Christian worship is an integral part of the design experiment focused on architecture-city relationship. Above all if we read this exploration after the projects of the churches, it is possible a double level of considerations. The first is evident, and it concerns on the particular ability shown by Culotta and Leone successfully facing some even very complex projects of adaptation. The second is referred to the clues coming from the projects of the two ambo for Bergamo (2004) and Trani in order to understand which research direction the only Culotta had taken, in the last years of his life and after the conclusion of the association with Leone. We are going to peek out some hypothesis both for the first and for the second point, trying to understand if there is an ommon ground among them. As the project of the churches, also for the liturgical adaptations the figure of Valenziano is central, with its eye-opening hermeneutics able to explain the deepest meanings of the liturgy in the relationships between the architectural space and the eminent places. Given the privilege of Valenziano’s help, we suppose the two Sicilian designers found inside the churches the same relationships they usually employ in their architectures, obviously with totally new and different rules. Undertaking new churches projects and liturgical adaptations could be almost a natural destiny for them; called to deal with more and more dense project materials. The fact that the adaptations excursus starts in Cefalù, with the reshaping of the ambo of the Cathedral, around fif- teen years after the church in Pollina, shows something more and a link between the two architects and their principal action ground. It seems, instead, that there is a continuity between the confirmations and the exceptions done in the Cefalù urban knit or countryside and the very delicate operations made inside the churches. Some choices as moving the altar are operations about the limit, that is they are acting in the often very small field between the request of the renewed liturgy, the action range of the omphalos and the general features of the church space. While, inserting the ambo where there was not – in addition to the reconfiguration of Cefalù and to the translation of Pisa – forced and, at the same time, encouraged Culotta and Leone and then the only Culotta to go through less known paths. In this part of the research we can notice that the reference to the byzantine ambo – in its double meaning of double-scale element or high monument – gives place, in the last proposals, to something new. The reference to the high monument is both in Bergamo and in Trani. Nevertheless the dynamic component of resurrection and the strength of the Words match the centrifugal action typical of a lot of modern projects. This energy is able to make thousands-years-still shapes vibrate. Bergamo and Trani ambos are pitching into the nave, catching and re-interpreting the etymological mea- ning of the word ambo, letting Culotta find new ways for exploration in adaptations as well. The Bergamo (2004) and Trani ambo should be placed aside the project of Pozzuoli Temple-Cathedral, of Isernia Auditorium and of the squares of the historical centre in Benevento; all together they make another phase in Culotta architectural research. Just the ambos are the most important proofs of this new conditions, because they are exploration on the shape lead in places where a comprehensible caution tends to be prevalent on more daring behaviours. In the case of Culotta, the courage leverage on an aware- ness of his own means based on thousands of didactic and research projects. The ambos attracted by the nave, respecting liturgical reasons, are the result of the same sensitivity that had made the crowning element of Cefalù Town Hall inflect towards the Cathedral square or that had changed the EGV Centre of Via Roma into the urban joint between the railways station, at an higher level, and the city laid down. Architectures announcing other architectures, able to change isolated places into focuses of the urban pattern. A sensitivity finding into the liturgical adaptation projects an extreme condition useful to verify the results of many other projects. Bergamo and Trani ambos, dimensionally small architectures, are actually some of the biggest works in order to certify the value of one of the most significant Italian architectural researches between twentieth and twenty-first century.

Una esplorazione degli adeguamenti liturgici di Pasquale Culotta e Giuseppe Leone conduce a comprendere in che modo la loro riflessione sulle architetture per il culto cristiano cattolico sia parte integrante della sperimentazione progettuale incentrata sul rapporto architettura-città. Nel saggio si specifica in cosa consista il lavoro di adeguamento rispetto alle indicazioni formulate nel Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II (1963). Ci si sofferma sulle peculiarità della liturgia rinnovata: il valore "processionale" dello spazio ecclesiale e la relazione immanente-trascendente, a scala architettonica e urbana. In seguito si approfondiscono, "caso per caso", la riconfigurazione dell'ambone del Duomo di Cefalù, gli adeguamenti della SS. Trinità, del Presbiterio della Cattedrale di Pisa, delle Cattedrali di Piazza Armerina, di Bergamo, di Trani e il progetto dell'altare della Cattedrale di Mazara del Vallo. Il saggio mette in luce come la ricerca progettuale di Pasquale Culotta e Bibi Leone sugli adeguamenti liturgici, condotta con raro rigore, esplora il nodo di tale questione e si allarga a quell’intorno geografico che qui ha depositato l’essenza di un’idea dell’architettura incomprensibile senza la comprensione dei luoghi. Si tratta di un lavoro che pone ancora un problema irrisolto, quello della specificità dell’architettura siciliana, del perché della sua “diversità” e del suo vigore giovanile che molte opere recenti di architetti locali mostrano al massimo livello. Il loro modus operandi, sempre teso a porre in essere relazioni tra architettura e contesto, si è ulteriormente inverato nei progetti di chiese divenute, nei loro ragionamenti, degli straordinari fulcri urbani. Architetture indispensabili per la definizione di labili tessuti periferici, e per lo svelamento di interazioni fra parti di città contigue eppure, reciprocamente afone. Tale approccio, volto a connettere, ha costituito una costante fondamentale nella loro esperienza della progettazione.