Decommissioning and Reuse of Liturgical Architectures: Historical Processes and Temporal Dimensions

The matter of the decommissioning and transformation of underused Christian places of worship is not a recent or contingent issue but, rather, a constitutive historical element of Christian architecture. This chapter highlights certain theoretical issues discussed in the actual architectural research and offers reflections on the phenomenon of the decommissioning and reuse of churches in Europe, mainly from the Catholic point of view. The disciplinary perspective is that of architectural history, a field of investigation that has always dealt with transformations and the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage in relation to social and political dynamics. The study of current transformations, and the design of future ones, can only be founded on research about interpretation of the historic processes and social and ecclesial tensions that are indelibly stratified within every place of worship. Il saggio, parte dell' "Oxford Handbook of Religious Space", presenta il quadro della discussione teorica e storiografica del rapporto tra storia dell'architettura liturgica e processi di trasformazione e risignificazione del patrimonio di interesse religioso sottoutilizzato o dismesso.