Meritxell Sanctuary

In 1974 the Taller developed a grand plan for the reconstruction of the Sanctuary of Meritxell, in Andorra. The medieval church burned down in 1972, throughout the night of a popular holiday. The task was to give back to the people their religious and cultural centre; but rebuilding the sanctuary could not be reduced to pure archaeological labour, returning the fallen stones to their original position. Nor could the strong influence of the local architectural character and landscape be ignored. The Taller constructed a new church which recalls the Romanesque shapes of the original structure.
Andorra is a small, mountainous country situated in the middle of the Pyrenees on the border between Spain and France. It falls within the historical region of Catalonia, and its language and cultural traditions are Catalan.
The building itself is a synthesis of proportional geometry and new construction and engineering techniques. Inspiration for the church’s proportions was drawn from the original Romanesque site, and the Albertian and Palladian Neopythagorean use of square roots and circles, including the addition of certain Catalan mudèjar references—for example, Sant Miquel de Cuixà and the small cloister at Santes Creus. The project drawings combine plan, section, and façade through a harmonious layout based on symbolic numerology and the relationship between basic measurements onsite and in the program. Outside, the building is a conscious continuation of Romanesque forms, a shape that belongs to the black mountain, wrapped in mythical vegetation. And it’s clearly part of the small hamlet in which it’s located, capturing the architectural philosophy of similar Andorran temples, while remaining very aware of the difference in scale.
The journey from the mountainous environment through the anteroom’s black rock portals into the op-art world of black and white is also a poetic statement of Andorra’s seasons: the wintery snow and the summer flora completely change the context of the site and strongly influence the architectural drama within the building. The use of copper sheathing over all the roofs and vertical surfaces that aren’t black or white aims to introduce a third, all-important colour to the symphony of the mountain, a green, lichenous, grassy tone exquisite in its contrast with the black and white, and which can only be obtained through the long-term oxidisation of copper that is so magnificent on Vicenza’s basilica.
The vaults of the cloisters and the crossed-barrel vault of the church, originally constructed in shuttered concrete (the eighth century concrete vaulting of Saint Martin du Canigou), were changed to lightweight curved metal trusses covered with plywood on both surfaces, something closer to aircraft construction than Pyrenean craftsmanship, but visually indistinguishable and quick and cheap to erect.
The stone walls, approximately a yard thick, were built by Galician masons who work the summer season in Andorra and return home in winter. They excavated the stones onsite and placed them against an interior brick support wall, which was then rendered on the inside and covered with terrazzo tiles.
The free-floating sculptural arches placed around the building express a two-directional spatial continuity and the concept of unfinished space, as the organic building seems to outpace the builders’ control. The superb, unfinished exterior of the nave in Sienna Cathedral and the Royal Atarazanas Gothic boatyard in Barcelona were two sources of inspiration for this design.