Towards a Church Architecture - Primary Source Edition

287 Pages·2014·20.904 MB·English

by  Peter Hammond

Towards a
Church Architecture
/
BDITBD BY Peter Hammond
THE ARCHITECTURAL PRESS
LONDON
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Content•
Acknowledgements 8
Foreword 9
Note on Contributors 13
A Radical Approach to Church Architecture 1 s
Peter Hammond
2 Modern Architectura\ Theory and the Liturgy 08
Nigel Melhuish
3 Meaning and Understanding 65
Robert Maguire
4 Material Fabric and Symbolic Pattern 78
Keith Mu"ªY
5 A Liturgica\ Brief 91
H. Benedict Green
6 Church Architecture and the Liturgy 107
Charles Davis
The Theologica\ Basis of Church Architecture 128
7
James A. Whyte
8 Liturgy and Society 191
Patrick McLaughlin
9 TPahter iCckh uNructhtg aennds the Community 206
Architectural Seriousness 220
JO Lance Wright
Appendix 245
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.._ !j_L5 72-

lllu•tratlon•
129 Rudolf Schwarz, Corpus Christi, Aachen.
132 Rudolf Schwarz, Chapel of St Albert, Leversbach.
134 Rudolf Schwarz, Church of the Holy F amily, Oberhausen.
137 Rudolf Schwarz, St Christopher, Cologne-Niehl.
140 Rudolf Schwarz, St Anthony, Essen.
143 Rudolf Schwarz, St Andrew, Essen.
144 Rudolf Schwarz, St Michael, Frankfurt am Main.
145 Emil Steffann and Klaus Rosiny, 'Maria in den Benden',
Dilsseldorf-Wersten.
148 Emil Steffann, St Lawrence, Munich.
149 André Le Donné, Church of the Sacred Heart, Mulhouse.
152 André Le Donné, St Ciare, Porte de Pantin, Paris.
154 Robert Maguire and Keith Murray, St Paul, Bow Common,
London
159 Robert Maguire and Keith Murray, St Matthew, Perry
Beeches, Birmingham.
161 Rainer Senn, Chapel at St André, near Nice.
162 Rainer Senn, project for a pentagonal timber chapel.
164 Rainer Senn, Our Lady of Lourdes, Pontarlier.
167 Rainer Senn, Seminary chapel, Pelousey, near Besan~on.
169 Rainer Senn, project for a prefabricated church.
171 Rainer Senn, Church at Villejuif, Paris.
172 Kaija and Heikki Siren, Chapel at Otaniemi, Finland.
176 Mies van der Rohe, Chapel, Illinois Institute of Technology,
Chicago.
Acknowledcement•
Acknowledgments are due to Verlag Aschendorff, Dr Theodor Klauser,
and the German Liturgical Commission for permission to translate from
the original German, and to reproduce their directives for church building
(translated from Ruhtlinien f1ir die Gesta/tu11g des Gotteshauses aus dem
Geiste dn riimischen Liturgie, compiled by Theodor Klauser al the order
of, and in collaboration with, the German Liturgical Commission. Verlag
Aschendorff, Münster, Westphalia, 1955. Also to the Reverend William
Wenninger, Chairman of the Diocesan Liturgical Commission of Superior,
Wisconsin, for permission to reproduce the Diocesan Church Building
Directives issued by that Commission.
Also to the following for permission to reproduce illustrations: Dipl.
Ing. Frau Maria Schwarz and F. H. Kerle Verlag, pp. 12ir44; Emil
Steffann and Klaus Rosiny, pp. 145-7, photographs Konrad Mahns; Emil
Steffann, p. 148, photographs JO Inge Bock-Fetzer, JI Gustl Vogel; André
le Donné, pp. '49-5J• photographs J2, J4• 35, J6, J7 Yves Guillemaut, JJ,
41, 42 Chevojon; Robert Maguire and Keith Murray, pp. 154-60, photo
graphs 44, 45, 47 H. de Burgh Galwey, Arphot (by courtesy of The Archi
tutural Re<oiew), 46, 49, 50, 52 Norman Gold; Rainer Senn, pp. 161-71,
photographs 61, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 7J Walter Gründer; Kaija and
Heikki Siren, pp. 172-5, photographs 74 Havas, 75, 76, 77 Pietinen;
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, p. 176, photograph 81 Hedrich-Blessing.
F'oreword
This book is a by-product of a discussion which has bcen going on
within the New Churches Research Group since its foundation in
1957. Most of the eBBays which it contains originated in papen read
at conferences organized by the group during the last three years,
though severa( of them have been completely rewritten in the light
of subsequent debate and criticism. The NCRG has from the outset
been an inter-denominational body, drawing its membership from
most of the major Christian communities; it also includes a number
of architccts who would not describe themselves as Christians at ali,
but who recognize that many of the problems which the group has
tried to face are problems affecting modero architecture in general:
not merely a single building type, which, whatever its importance
in the past, may seem today to be of somewhat marginal concern.
The contributors to this symposium include five Anglicans, four
Reman Catholics and a Presbyterian, and, granted that the present
debate about church design cuts right across denominational frontiers,
differences of opinion are inevitable. 1 have made no attempt to
reconcile conflicting views or to gloss over such differences where
they exist. The purpose of the book is to stimulate further discussion
and to raise fundamental questions, not to provide an agreed
statement.
But while the reader will have no difficulty in detecting occasional
differenccs of emphasis or opinion, what is surely more remarkable
is the fact that ten writers, who if they do not represent the full
diversity of denominational allegiance to be found within the some
what ill-defined frontiers of the NCRG, are at any rate drawn from
severa! very diverse traditions, should find so large a measure of
common ground. It seems to me significant that wherever the pro
blems of church design are being discussed today at a really funda
mental leve!, and in a theological context, one finds a substantial
measure of agreement, not only in regard to baa.ic principies, but
even where particular applications are concerned.
Tawards a Chwrch ArchikctNre
So far as the book has a thesis, it can be summed up in the title
of the first essay: the first essential for church builders today is a
radical approach, an approach which, paradoxical as this may seem,
involves forgetting al! about architecture - at any rate in the early
stages of the design process. The second essential is architectural
seriousness: and everything that is said here about the need for
analysis and the consideration of human activities assumes the need
for a deeply serious architecture.
In a talk which formed part of a series arranged by the NCRG in
collaboration with the University of London in the autumn of 1959,
Pctcr Smithson proposed the following 'spiritual cxercises' for
churchmen and architects; they bear very closely on the theme of
this book:
For churchmtn
i. Keep on hammering away at the 'functional' requirements being
met.
ii. Try to make committees and architects scrutinize their proposals,
so that even if they cannot invest every part of the building with
meaning, in thc deepest sense, they can at least eliminate the
obviously meaningless.
and for architects
i. Remember that what is most importan! is the 'general solution':
that the formal organization should serve first that which is
'central to the problem', as Mies van der Rohe would say.
ii. That the great baroque churches are not at ali theatrical in thc
expressionist (o r Gordon Craig) sense, but rather communicate
their meaning primarily by space, and by absolute consistency of
plastic language. And these tools are still available - in fact are the
only tools of architecture.
iii. That there is no reason why the technology and materials of
churches should be in any way different from normal building, in
fact they have to be the same (the ideation of the commonplace
and so on).
In other 'IJJOTds, we should be heading towards rather plain brick bo:res
fl1ith no tricks.
That is a very convcnient summary of the theme of these essays
and thc illustrations havc been chosen primarily to show what this
can mean in practicc. Al! the buildings illustrated are parish churches
For""°'d
or churches designed to serve needs not substantially different from
those of a parochial community; they do not include monastic
buildings, pilgrimage or mortuary chapela, or other churchea with
functions radically different from those of the typical dtm1US ecckritu.
Apart from the two Anglican parish churches illustrated on pagea
154-6o and the chapels at Otaniemi and Chicago illustrated on
pages 172-76, ali the buildings shown are designed for the celebra
tion of the liturgy according to the Roman rite. I suapect that a
good many English Free Churchmen would feel far more at home
in a church like the one at Perry Beeches (pages 159""6o) or in Rainer
Senn's chapel for a Catholic seminary at Pelouaey (pagea 167-8)
than they would in the First Presbyterian Church at Stamford,
Connecticut (see page 24); as 1 remarked in an earlier essay on
church architecture, 'one of the ironies of the present situation is
that the classic principks o/ Anglican rrorship are being given far more
convincing architectural expression in modern Reman Catholic
churches on the Continent than in Anglican buildings in London,
Coventry or the New Towns'. Similar ironies abound today in every
situation where the leaven of the new reformation is at work: the
need for a radical approach is not confined to the realm of church
architecture.
Hull, March 1962 Peter Harnmond