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Projects
View and learn more about the design of churches and other places of worship, including synagogues, chapels, cathedrals, mosques, prayer spaces, convents, altars, Buddhist temples, Baha’i temples, shrines, non-denominational churches and places of worship, meditation centres, meeting houses, and mandirs; for case studies, precedent studies, and inspiration. Featuring the work of renown architects Riepl Riepl Architekten, Emilio Ambasz, Predock Frane Architects, Larkin Architects, DesignInc Tasmania, Jensen & Skodvin, Allmann Sattler Wappner Architects, Daniel Bonilla, Matti Sanaksenaho, Takashi Yamaguchi, Heinz Tesar, Klein Dytham Architects, Richard Meier & Partners, and Slavin Architects, among many others.
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Heinz Tesar
Donau city, Vienna
It is, at first sight, a black gleaming cuboid. A geometrical exercise in minimalism and restraint. Hard edges and clean facades predominate. Dark stainless steel cladding provides a sense of gravity. It appears as a monument, perhaps reminiscent of one of Kubrick's mysterious obelisks in "2001: A Space Odyssey".
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Daniel Bonilla
La Calera, Columbia
In the turbulent 70s, French theorist Roland Barthes proclaimed that the most erotic portion of the body is where the garment gapes. The sublime is a flash, a frozen unveiling, the staging of appearance as disappearance. What's unusual is the resonance of this theory in religious architecture, but Columbian architect Daniel Bonilla shows it can be done - and with a perfectly metaphysical purity.
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DesignInc Tasmania
Glenorchy, Hobart
Over four years ago Dominic College lost its 1950s Chapel through arson. For Elvio Brianese, a former student of the coeducational Catholic school in Glenorchy, northern Hobart, rebuilding the Chapel was a project of passion. Brianese is a Director of DesignInc Tasmania, and he has a great deal of experience in local and international educational projects. He focussed squarely on imparting some modernity, some living symbolism, to the structure.
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Larkin Architects
Toronto, Canada
‘God rays’ are among nature’s finest phenomena - we see them when the sun streams down through the clouds after a mid-afternoon storm, or when the ocean shimmers like liquid gold under focused beams of brilliant sunlight.
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Allmann Sattler and Wappner
Munich, Germany
The Goethe Institute in Berlin mounted a travelling exhibition of German religious architecture this year. One of the most impressive works displayed was the Church of the Sacred Heart, Munich.
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Riepl Riepl Architekten
Steyr, Austria
Peter and Gabriele Riepl do not see their role as one of creation, but rather, one of rebirth: the reinvention and reconditioning of existing spaces rather than the invention of new ones. It is fitting, then, that their latest masterpiece takes the form of a church, a long-used site of worship, albeit one that does not conform to any of the entrenched traditions of ecclesiastical structures.
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Jensen & Skodvin
Oslo, Norway
Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “if the roof doesn’t leak, the architect hasn’t been creative enough”, and this subversive cheek hints and sprouts like the boulders and the trees through Jensen & Skodvin’s Mortensrud Church.
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Singapore is famous for its cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. It is home to Singaporeans of Malay, Chinese, Indian and Eurasion backgrounds, and is one of the world's truly multi-faith countries, encompassing Islam and Christianity, Taoism and Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Baha'i. The design of the Assyafaah mosque is imbued with this sense of complexity.
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Pascal Arquitectos, Mexico City
Pascal Arquitectos have perhaps perfected the art of adaptability, displaying an innate responsiveness to the mood and intention of a project’s end users. Minimalist to the extreme, yet welcoming and anything but stark, Mourning House (2006) is a far cry from their Pedegral Shopping Centre, all futuristic neon highlights and avant-garde honeycomb façade. But then, this building has a very different purpose compared to that of a shopping centre, and its users approach it with a very different mindset, a fact that Pasqal Arquitectos have truly taken to heart.
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Conrad Gargett Architecture
Brisbane
The Northern Development of St Stephen's Cathedral is nestled into an extremely narrow site in Brisbane's CBD, between the heritage-listed Telecommunications House to the North (actually the home of Conrad Gargett Architecture's office prior to the project), the Cathedral to the South, and the podium of the 32-storey Comalco Tower.
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Peter Kulka
Meschede, Germany
Asceticism and monasticism form an innate coupling in most minds: we equate sparseness with the solitude and silence of deep meditation. Purity, serenity, austerity and severity are the hallmarks of Peter Kulka’s Haus der Stille (House of Silence) for the Benedictine Order in Meschede, Germany, a structure monolithically dedicated to mindful introspection.
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Matti Sanaksenaho
Turku, Finland
Serenity pervades the site of St Henry's Ecumenical Art Chapel from all sides; the wide open air, the pine-scented earth, and the fervour of religious fire hungrily but harmoniously co-mingle and dwell, silently and invisibly, in the bare belly of Matti Sanaksenaho's fish.
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Foster and Partners
Astana, Kazakhstan
The sudden erection of Kazakhstan's startling Pyramid of Peace and Accord made for an apt detour from the churches, temples and synagogues we've been covering the past couple of years; it struck us immediately as undoubtedly the most exemplary candidate to date for our Peace on Earth feature.
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Takashi Yamaguchi is very aware of the responsibility that comes with the design of sacred spaces. He is one of Japan's most well-known architects, and creator of some truly ethereal and thought-provoking new Buddhist temples.
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Predock Frane Architects
Desert Hot Springs, California; New Mexico
Trusted by two Zen Buddhist groups to design their structures of meditation and retreat, young Californian firm Predock Frane must see deeply into the nature of things, be it natural, unnatural, supernatural, built or felt or lacking. Desert Hot Springs and New Mexico were the sites, Zen was the philosophy, the rest was left to the vision and gut of Predock Frane to weave spirit into the elements of the arid American desert and Central American rocky hot springs.
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Frank Gehry | Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners | Foster+Partners | Steven Holl and Arup | Pascal Arquitectos | Architectus' Gallery of Modern Art, QLD
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