Selective Participation: Alvar and Elissa Aalto’s Sacred Architecture in Riola di Vergato

This paper interrogates the architecture of Santa Maria Assunta in Riola di Vergato (1965-1980) with respect to Bolognese twentieth-century religious discourse on urbanisation and the city. The paper discusses the key issues which framed the inception, development, construction and reception of Santa Maria Assunta, designed by Finnish modernists Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) and Elissa Aalto (1922-1994) and their associates. The practice’s only Catholic church, Santa Maria Assunta was a direct product of Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro’s (1891-1976) ambitious church-building program, implemented in response to the scarcity of religious space in rapidly urbanising Bologna. The paper argues that Alvar and Elissa Aalto selectively accepted, adapted and appropriated ideas promoted by the Bolognese church-building program in their design of Santa Maria Assunta. On the one hand, working under the guidance of local figures, especially Cardinal Lercaro, the Aaltos sought to ensure that their design adhered to contemporaneous urban and religious ideals. On the other hand, the Aaltos remained fundamentally sceptical of the ambitions set out by post-war programs of religious renewal, especially those rooted in the ideal of ‘participation’, which manifest in reformed liturgical guidelines and the integration of church buildings into urban and suburban parochial complexes. The realised design of Santa Maria Assunta embodies the tension inherent in the Aaltos’ selective adoption of Bolognese ideals: some elements of the design are products of the broader discourse on the city and the Church institution’s role therein, whereas others communicate an opposition to reformist ideals which the Aaltos viewed with disfavour.