Architecture: Superhighway Church

In a secular age, long removed from the centuries that built the great cathedrals, a church still remains a profound creative challenge for an architect; clergy and congregations are among the most open-minded of clients. Yet they do not often concede the degree of freedom given to Italian Architect Giovanni Michelucci, 73, in his new Church of St. John the Baptist. His client was the governmental superhighway authority (modeled on the New York Port Authority) that built the Autostrada del Sole from Milan to Naples. It wanted a memorial to dead highway-builders, and put no limitations of time, size, form or budget on Architect Michelucci.

The church stands strangely inside a clover leaf of the expressway near Florence, and serves as a spiritual halfway house for travelers. "The general form is that of a tent," explains Michelucci, who designed its sway-backed curves with architectural as well as spiritual freedom in mind. He spent hours daily on the job, changing details in concrete and carpentry.

St. John's takes an informal stance in its structure. The main altar faces across the narrowest part of the nave toward an upper chapel, so that in effect the nave's long dimension becomes a transept, terminated east and west by smaller altars. Architect Michelucci has also departed from custom by en folding the narthex, or entrance portico, in a gentle cloister; the church swallows its own entrance. The whole is asymmetrical, forcing the worshiper into the relaxed mood Michelucci wanted. As he says, "This church is a little city in which men should meet and recognize in each other the common hope of finding each other again."