Projects by Name

In November 1968, Società Generale Immobiliare, the largest developer and construction company in Italy, hired Breuer to design a parish church for the residential community of Obligate near Rome. The commission came through Breuer’s associate, Mario Jossa, who headed the Breuer office in Paris and whose uncle was the Vatican’s Apostolic Delegate in Washington, D.C. Records reveal two designs for the church, neither of which were ever built because Immobiliare ran into financial difficulties. Both designs exploited Breuer’s fascination with hyberbolic-parabaloid geometries, as evidenced by many of Breuer’s other religious buildings including St. Frances de Sales in Muskegon, Michigan. In the first design, the walls of the sanctuary twist to meet a tilted façade of Roman travertine. Changes to the program caused Breuer and Jossa to redesign the church. The stepped profile of the church rose from the low entrance to the tall sanctuary lit by skylights. The upper wall of the sanctuary volume also functioned as a campanile. An administration building was located across a terrace.