Introduction
On 12 June 2008 in Pavia, at the headquarters of the Frate Sole Foundation, the jury conducted its evaluation of the works received for the fourth International Prize for Sacred Architecture.
First and foremost we must highlight the diverse geographical and geo-cultural origins of the works presented: all five continents were represented by the works in the competition and there was no shortage of churches for the Protestant and Orthodox faiths.
Equally diverse were the characteristics of the works themselves: from the tiny prayer space to the large hall for religious gatherings, from the parish complex to the spaces devoted to funerals, from monasteries to sanctuaries, to university chapels.
There were many variations on the theme: from the Orthodox churches of the East, the typological fixity of which is combined with decorative and iconographic tradition, to proposals of places of prayer that verge on metaphysical abstraction. This reveals a plurality of expression that is now consolidated and a consequent impossibility of giving a certain unity to the theme even within the same areas of geographical, denominational or cultural affiliation.
Furthermore, in the realm of Catholic churches and as regards the attention to the liturgy, it must also be registered that in the proposals coming from cultural areas profoundly oriented by the Conciliar reform of Vatican II, the prevalent liturgical approaches have been of the traditional type.
After an initial phase sifting through the works, the commission concentrated its attention on a selection of 15 works.
The jury’s verdict was to propose a winning project and five different works to be classified in second place. The equal merit was considered appropriate due to multiple factors, associated with the difficulty in discriminating among a range of quality proposals that were so typologically diverse and above all with the endeavour of the members of the jury to offer an overall balanced evaluation. Some further mentions were also proposed, outside of the classification.

The Jury’s Verdict

First Prize
The jury proposed awarding the First Prize in the fourth International Prize for Sacred Architecture to the project for the new monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur (Czech Republic) (no. 47).
The members of the commission appreciated the result achieved through a construction of great rigour, silence and eloquence, which is both normal and extraordinary at the same time, in which a powerful interchange between the architecture and its inhabitants is evident.
Recalling the careful evaluation made by the client regarding the architect who would be best able to respond to the expectations of the monastic community, it must be acknowledged that the choice of English architect John Pawson responded to the desire of the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Sept-Fons to realize an intensely Cistercian work by updating the ethical and aesthetic canons advocated by St. Bernard of Clairvaux while respecting the author’s rigorous minimalist poetics.
The restoration of an abandoned farmhouse and agricultural annexes in Touzim in the Czech Republic has enabled Pawson to create a communion between the old and the new, between memory and life, through a process of construction by the monks themselves, which has brought about a successful identification between the monastic community and the space that welcomes it.
Finally, it must be mentioned that this is the first Catholic monastery to be built in a former Communist country, with all the symbolic meaning that this presupposes and the difficulty in realizing it with an uncommon mastery of proportion.

Joint Second Prize
The jury proposed awarding the joint second prize to the following projects.

Parish Centre and Church of San Giovanni Apostolo, Perugia (Italy) (no. 03)
Paolo Zermani
The parish complex designed by Paolo Zermani in Perugia has been appreciated for its rigour and sobriety, one that creates a dialogue between austere buildings, cleverly controlled through the use of geometry. The hall has a strongly longitudinal development that creates a liturgical space associated with the tradition rather than with the reforming Conciliar spirit. The extreme rigour of the space and materials, combined with the rhythmic sequence of the order of giant columns by the walls amplifies the symbolic dominant element, namely the long walk of the believer towards the Christ-altar. This is pursued by the author with an intransigent dis cipline, such as to allow him both to control the complexity of the theme of the liturgical space and to overcome the difficulties of the site where the parish complex is located.

Chapel of St. Benedict in Kolbermoor Germany) (no. 06)
Peter Kunze, Stefanie Seeholzer
The small chapel stands in an isolated clearing in the park of the old spinning mill of Kolbermoor . Its creators, Peter Kunze and Stefanie Seeholzer, handle a theme that is only apparently a simple one. The small sacred building that welcomes visitors for prayer is austere, built with a sense of proportion and a wise use of natural light. The small building reinterprets the morphological constants of traditional churches, whether large or small, with a refined simplicity of forms and a rigorous use of contemporary materials, not neglecting to evoke the distinctive symbolic elements of each church.

Chapel of the Fazenda Veneza in Valinhos, São Paulo (Brazil) (no. 24)
Decio Tozzi
The small chapel consists of two plastic elements that mark a space in the continuity of the landscape: a curved roof to shelter people before a large cross that rises from the water. The meeting between the two elements generates a specific location: a small temple for prayer on the shores of the lake on a farm near São Paulo in Brazil. The chapel is designed by Decio Tozzi with an extreme simplicity that gives the whole design a symbolic eloquence. The assembly is welcomed by the cement vault; beyond the altar, the powerful sign of the Passion of Christ and further beyond, nature. The space of the chapel thus encounters the space of nature in this poetic place of worship without walls.

Catholic Parish Centre of the Sacred Heart in Völklingen (Germany) (no. 25)
Lamott Architekten BDA
Völklingen, in the Saar Basin, is a town that testifies to the industrial activity of the area’s past. The parish centre proposes new identities with respect to the recent conurbations, with out neglecting to evoke its connection with the industrial landscape.
Four rigorous building blocks are organised around a central courtyard. The rough cement surface of the dividing walls and the harsh steel structures testify to the connection with the location and at the same time intentionally denounce a programmatic “absence”: in the silent space of the church the attention is in fact shifted onto the community joined in prayer. The bare surfaces that delimit it find their roots in the thought of Romano Guardini. The special attention consciously devoted
to the liturgical community distinguishes this work.

New Cistercian Monastery on the Island of Tautra (Norway) (no. 48)
JSA, Jensen & Skodvin Arkitektkontor
The monastery stands on the island of Tautra, set among the Norwegian fjords, and is home to a community of 18 Cistercian monks from different countries. The extraordinary and intimate bond with the location is of great importance and is poetically emphasised by the construction, by the materials used and by the relations established between  the building and  the  surrounding landscape. The typological choices and spatial system were developed following a meticulous analysis of the daily lives of the monks, who actively participated in the planning. The rigorous design method of the authors is evident in the repeated use of a wooden element of the same section, which structures and qualifies the entire bearing system of the building. Here too it must be highlighted that there is a close relationship between the religious community and the planners,  which has favoured the success of the realization.

Mentions
The members of the jury have recommended the mentioning of some further works.

The parish complex in Vilanova de Gaia (Portugal) by architect José Fernando Con salves (no. 50) is highlighted, for having known how to respond precisely and sensitively to the programme of a contemporary parish centre, creating spaces of transition between exterior and interior that organise the site, using construction principles as a formal resource, exploring the use of a few materials that  are receptive and adequate in expressive terms, and using light in a way oriented towards the requirements of worship.

Mention is also made of the small chapel built for the Franciscan community in Kisfakos in Hungary, a work by architect Gábor Sajtos (no. 45). In a farm built following the wishes of a small group of monks, a chapel that is also used as a summer refuge stands poetically in the undulating Magyar agricultural landscape. Great oaks mark and protect the site, and in their shade the small chapel creates a subtle dialogue between natural and artificial with a simple and poetically sparse  language that places minimal intervention (also at low cost) at the antipodes of any fashionable planning attitude.

Finally, even though this intervention lies at the margins of the subject of the competition, the pavilion of meditation and prayer at the “Salam” Cardiac Surgery Centre in Khartoum in the Federal Republic of the Sudan, by the Studio Tamassociati (no. 42) also receives a special mention. In a difficult multi-ethnic and multi-religious context, the small building gives concrete shape to the effort to define a space for prayer and meditation that is open to all faiths. Built with humble materials, it indicates a path to follow, to unite rather than to discriminate, above all not exporting formulas taken uncritically from the repertoires of Western culture into such radically different contexts.

Members of the Jury
Arch. Luigi Leoni
Arch. Marco Bosi
Prof. Arch. Giorgio Della Longa
Prof. Arch. Esteban Fernández Cobián
Arch. Orazio La Rocca
Don Ing. Giuseppe Russo
Prof. Arch. Meinhard Von Gerkan