THE LIVING CHAPEL PROJECT
The Living Chapel is an architectural landscape installation, a place of inspiration for action to fight the climate crisis, and a living symbol of interreligious dialogue for the common goal of caring for our planet.
Conceived by the Australian-Canadian composer Julian Revie, the Living Chapel is a garden that leads to spiritual reflection on the intimate need for a harmonious connection between humanity and nature and an action program supported and shared by the Vatican Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
https://livingchapel.com/
The phases of the project
2018-2019
The realization of the project
The preparation
2020
The arrival in Italy
The construction
The inauguration
2021
The Milan project
A special edition for ALL4CLIMATE ITALY2021
2022
The distribution of trees
2022-2023
From the Living Chapel project, two new collections for the Botanical Garden Museum
The first Living Chapel was designed and built by an international team led by the Architect
Gillean Denny supported by more than 100 students from the Stuckemen School
at Pennsylvania State University
Meanwhile at the Botanical Garden of Rome, waiting for the works to be completed and for the installation to arrive from the United States, we collect the seeds and plant them to give life to our forest as a symbol of action
After more than a month of ocean crossing, in early March the installation, disassembled into dozens of pieces, arrives at the port of Naples in two large containers. It will arrive at the Rome Botanical Garden when the country is already in lockdown due to the pandemic
When it was clear that the American team could not come to Italy, with Fabio Attorre, director of the Botanical Garden, we set up an all-Italian team and in May we started assembling the work
A few days after the end of the lockdown, on 5 June 2020, on International Environment Day, we inaugurated the first Living Chapel at the Botanical Garden Museum in Rome in the presence of institutional partners
Six years after the Paris Agreement, Italy sees itself as a protagonist as a partner country of COP26, the conference of the Parties on changes
climate change, hosting the Pre-COP in Milan, where around 400 young people from 197 countries will meet to develop concrete proposals to be presented in the COP26 negotiations in Glasgow. With the support of C4C World Bank, the Municipality of Milan and the ENGIM Foundation we have created a new Living Chapel in the Aristide Calderini Garden, donating a regenerated public space to the city of Milan
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From the seeds collected at the Botanical Garden of Rome in 2019, and thanks to the contribution of the Lazio Region Oxygen Project, we have raised more than 2,000 young trees which we have donated to local voluntary associations for the forestation of degraded areas in the city and to religious associations for the creation of Laudato Si' Gardens
Distributed around the installation and grown in recycled oil barrels, in these three years we have nurtured the ancient orforgotten fruits, plant and cultural heritage of central Italy, which we donated to the Botanical Garden for the planting of a permanent orchard
When the Botanical Garden decided to permanently host the Living Chapel, we disassembled the vertical greenery and used the installation to make jasmine plants climb together with a new collection of clematis
