N°25 — Sacred / Institutional Santa Barbara Parish Complex
Designed by OFL Architecture — the studio of Francesco Lipari — together with Lillo Giglia and Giuseppe Conti, the Santa Barbara Parish Complex in Licata is a contemporary sacred complex that roots itself deeply in Sicilian building tradition while finding a fully contemporary formal language.
Location
Licata, Agrigento, IT
Client
Archdiocese of Agrigento · Santa Barbara Parish
Year
Category
Architecture-we-love
A Church That Belongs to Its Street
What draws Bu+// to this project is its restraint. OFL's design refuses the monumental register that sacred architecture so often reaches for — instead it sits among its neighbours, permeable and unhurried. The liturgical hall is organised around a Greek-cross plan rooted in the archetype of the primitive dwelling, transformed through curved concrete walls and a flowing roof that expresses gathering without insisting on it. Bu+// worked alongside the team on selected technical and design questions — a conversation between practices that began long before this building.
A church that also functions as a civic square, a campus that connects education, worship, and daily life, is an architectural idea that feels more urgent now than it probably did when the project began. Bu+// contributed to this project alongside OFL Architecture — bringing the practice's interest in civic space and material restraint to a building that took nearly a decade to reach completion.
