Finally made it to Miguel Fisac's Iglesia de Santa Ana (1965) today. There will be more Fisac to come, but I wanted to put this up. Of the major figures of post-war Spanish architecture, he is perhaps the most clearly related to the Scandinavians, whose work he'd seen in person. Asplund is mentioned, as well as Jacobsen, but surely Aalto must have been an influence as well. The Asplund relation can be more clearly seen in a couple of buildings I'll post later.

In the late 1950s, Fisac developed a highly specific language of pre-stressed concrete elements, or bones, here combined with both sculptural and generic cast-in-place forms. At Santa Ana, the interior is given great attention, while the exterior (the church sits in the middle of a post-war housing development) appears to be the largely unadulterated result of the interior manipulations.



The sanctuary







The stained glass on the rear walls









The quite delicate pews



Inside the baptistry and confessional





The parish offices



The little cloister





The exterior form is clearly driven by the interior





Santa Ana, like everything else, is being restored this summer. Plans and sections were conveniently posted



When I walked into the church a few people were inside testing its presumably new Bose soundsystem. It was the first time I'd been asked to be absolutely quiet in a church. I heard the noise you will hear in the video at least forty times. Bose has got to be making a killing on churches.

Santa Ana from Emmett Zeifman on Vimeo.