Hallgrímskirkja,Jubilee Church

Jubilee Church



Jubilee ChurchYou can’t miss the distinctive curved walls of The Jubilee Church in Tor Tre Teste, Rome. It was designed in 1996 by architect Richard Meier, who said that the modern-styled church is the "the crown jewel of the Vicariato di Roma’s (Archdiocese of Rome) Millennium project." And right he was!The curved walls not only serve the engineering purpose of minimizing thermal peak loads in the interior space, they are also a religious methapor:



Three circles of equal radius generate the profiles of the three shells that, together with the spine-wall, make up the body of the nave. While the three shells discretely imply the Holy Trinity, the reflecting pool symbolizes water in the ritual of Baptism


Hallgrímskirkja




Hallgrímskirkja (Icelandic for the Church of Hallgrímur), the tallest building in Iceland, is named after Hallgrímur Pétursson, a 17th century poet and clergyman. The church’s unusual design (some had likened it to a rude hand gesture) is supposed to represent volcanic columns rising between the steeple tower - a reference to Iceland’s many volcanoes. The iconic building looks like it belongs in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Indeed, many aspects of Tolkien’s work was inspired by Norse mythologies and many of the fictional names in the book are Norse in origin, although there is no reference that Hallgrímskirkja served as a model any of the towers in the book.

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