| 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. The site, in rural Oslo, Norway, is a jutting juncture of large pine trees and rocky outcrops, and situated atop this small crest is the church, conforming to the geometry of the space. From the northernmost entrance, the raw timber belltower rises like the surrounding trees – haphazardly and naturally – and the orthographic, skeletal structure dictates the clean, angular lines of the rest of the project like an invocative blueprint.
Consisting of a church and tower, a community centre and a courtyard, the project is hailed by architects as a refreshing feat in not only the harmony of nature and architecture but also the eclecticism in what it means to build a church in
the 21st century.
A thin layer of soil was carefully removed, and construction was underway. This church is not about deracinating and violently disturbing nature through nonchalant blasting and excavating, it’s about preserving existing vegetation. Furthermore, the tangible and invisible on-site topography determined the shape and elemental division of the buildings. Room remains, for example, for the anticipated pine trees to grow right through the walkways in the courtyard. No module has been used to influence the exact position of the gardens. Rather, the materials and structures chosen ensure a gradual, yet non-incremental adjustment of dimensions, without steps or modules.
In the main church space, neat, wooden rows of pews are interrupted by a giant rock seemingly budding and germinating through the concrete architecture. What’s more, the ugliness that could have characterised that feature is avoided by the placid, overall tone of the building. It’s a provocative picture, and one that no other church has so brazenly attempted: it’s that nature, even in the case of religion, is a mandatory injunction. It cannot be shut out, it cannot be hindered, it cannot be denied.
The main structure is a real piece of topsy-turvy, gravity defying work. Reversing the general practice of heavy materials on the bottom supporting increasingly lighter materials towards the top, the Mortensrud Church consists of a steel framework with a heavy stone wall uneasily supported above transparent glass walls. A glass façade 90-160cm off the stone wall defines a narrow gallery around the church room. The glass affords a visual connection with the outside activity, while, especially at pew level, sheltered by the stone, the glass allows interior and exterior, God and man, to flow together without glare or unease. The stones are stacked without mortar, creating little, intermittent holes through which light enters the hall like tiny glimmering stars. Otherwise, rectangular windows appear arbitrarily and asymmetrically through the stone. Of the stone walls, there is one even side, and one uneven as standard. The uneven exterior of the internal stone wall is exposed to the outside through the glass façade of the three sides of the church. The stone wall is stiffened horizontally by steel plates, 4mm x 250mm, that span between the columns, inserted into the wall every metre. These plates stiffen the wall only when the weight of the wall itself is added to this structure. The glass facades are stiffened with “propels” made from steel plates that are inserted into the vertical joints between the glass panes, and to the horizontal steel plates in the stone wall.
The architects talk of a tension between the wish to create a ‘silent’ self-referring space, and the obstacles limiting that possibility. Ultimately the obstacles were given due credence. The architects wanted, engendered in the very structure, a deliberate ploy to disrupt the conventional view of a church as a silent, unconnected, introspective place. This church is extroverted; connected to the multitudes of the surrounding nature. It’s fragmented, complex, and the architects relish the overall realisation that it’s impossible to photograph the whole building, or interior, in one shot. The whole building allows nature to leak inside, so the architects, Mr. Wright, have certainly been creative. +
Previous The western elevation of the Mortensrud Church, Oslo, viewed from the side court. The architects relish the fact that the church simply cannot be captured in one photographic shot.
Top Entrance garden with existing pine trees growing through the concrete floor, seen from the roof of the parish hall. The bell tower is wooden, naked, and skeletal, defining the vernacular of the buildings to come.
Middle Interior towards the west. A giant rocky outcrop emerges unexpectedly amid the pews in the main hall, creating a natural and inevitable affinity with nature.
Bottom The church's glass, combined with crude masonry, creates a visual relationship with the outside, natural world.
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