Religious Architecture

Project for a Catholic Temple with an Emphasis on Sustainable Techniques and Technologies

Abstract

Churches are important social spaces and when they aim for sustainability they are able to further aggregate the cultural, environmental and economic spheres of a community and which, in addition to impacting their architecture, stimulates social interaction and community unity. The objective of this work is to study religious architecture, sustainable construction techniques and technologies that can be applied to it, as well as to analyze similar architectural projects in order to understand their characteristics, functionalities and specificities, for a subsequent proposal for a sustainable church. The methods adopted for this work were descriptive research and the existing bibliographic survey on the topic. The project analysis criteria were: concept and party; environmental comfort (solar incidence and ventilation); volumetric composition; the relationship between the interior and exterior and sustainability. After the case studies, it was possible to develop the proposal for a sustainable church, at the preliminary project level, aimed at the population of the municipality of Paraguaçu-MG. It is concluded that religious architecture is a great example for alternative construction methods to be applied. The architectural design of the São Geraldo Church reaches important sustainability points in the search for reducing environmental impacts, strengthening social ties, encouraging the creation of healthy, efficient spaces that value the rational use of natural resources, as well as the dissemination of solutions available in the construction market.