Saint Joseph’s Oratory – Finalist

Text extracted from the team's proposal:

" Anchoring the route to archaeology - the secret meaning of the land of the site's origins - constitutes recognition of the foundation of the oratory and especially of the basilica, whose vertical axis of domes is located at the intersection of the Latin cross, at the foot of the altar: connection between Heaven and Earth. Here, the earth asserts itself as a medium and container for the accumulation of human history; the foundation of the Axis Mundi. This journey is part of a sedimentation of understanding of the place and its foundation. An ascending path manifests itself in a gradual unveiling : disappearance-revealing, gradual discovery, appearance-effacement, and a development from this anchorage to the mountain, to relational and human history, to nature. It develops into a mysticism. The museum concept supports this theme of anchoring to the land, to the archaeological and founding status of the place."