Description

In the submission details for the invited competition in 1982, the congregation requested a design for a “real church”. In other words, the new building in Graz-Ragnitz should be “immediately recognisable as a church”. This wish may have been in response to the difficulties that arose in connection with St Paul’s Church in Graz-Eisteichsiedlung designed by Ferdinand Schuster in 1971. This predominantly steel-and-glass building with its red and brown main hall and square plan was devoid of all sacred typological and atmospheric characteristics. Through its sobriety and neutrality, the elongated building aspired to be a “church of the world”; St Paul’s Church was an expression of a consequent, even radical “aggiornamento” in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Gradually, however, the congregation became increasingly disillusioned with their church and it was not long before the low unassuming building was regarded more as a multipurpose hall or cultural centre.

By contrast, the Brother Claus Church cannot by any means be described as unassuming or conventional. Situated at the edge of the town where urban switches to rural, the church sits on a broad strip of green between a six to eight storey housing estate to the south and a main road to the north. Although a somewhat tricky location, the heterogeneous nature of the situation does offer the potential to realise something individual, even playful, something that would rarely be tolerated in more structured urban textures and only if a client were determined enough to create what one might call “signature architecture”. An object of this kind which – however autonomous its conception may be – embodies the vitality of the “Graz School”, as seen in the work of Günther Domenig and Eilfried Huth, and draws on the organic tradition of emulating the soft forms of nature, animals and plants, has perhaps the best possible conditions here on the periphery.

Drawing on their previous spatial investigations into congregation and enclosure in earlier projects, the two architects have arranged the building around a common centre. One enters via a courtyard, to be more precise, from the tower at the northwest corner of the complex – the slanted wooden block containing the bells of the 17.5 metre high tower stands on six concrete columns – one is led through a portal into a cobbled courtyard surrounded on three sides by arcades. The west face of the courtyard is open. The fourth side of the ‘cloister’ is missing simply because the building planned for that area has not yet been realised. The 1300 square metre lawn on the southwest side, which opens out onto woodland and a stream, was originally planned to be used for a children’s nursery and a youth club.

From the portal beneath the tower on the northwest corner of the complex, one’s view wanders diagonally across the square courtyard before coming to rest on a covered passageway that leads in the direction of the housing estate and separates the complex into a somewhat larger church on the left-hand side and the smaller meeting house to the right. In each of the buildings, the arrangement is axial and symmetrical. In each of the buildings, the cross section is more dominant than the floor plan. In each of the buildings, a barrel vault crowns its ridge, in the church broken into two parts, a larger and a smaller quarter-circle. In each of the buildings, the canopy extends deep into the entrance hall so that it becomes part of the “cloister” around the courtyard.

The zinc-clad roof landscape, whose plethora of curved and slanting surfaces undulate dynamically, is the dominant feature of the architecture. Broad troughs separate the individual sections, the raining running along and down the columns. On one side of the plot, an embankment to the road rises up to the eaves, the zinc and glass continuing the undulation to the ridge of the roof. Depending on the weather, the matt shimmer of its surface merges with the white and grey of the sky above. Seen from the upper storeys of the neighbouring housing estate, the entire complex resembles the rise and fall of mountain ranges and valleys.

Inside the Brother Claus Church, the room is 22.5 metres long, 19.5 metres wide and 10.3 metres high to the underside of the curved laminated truss beams. Although the volume of the building is more or less the same as half a cube, one is unaware of its Euclidian proportions. Here, it is not the pale whitish masonry walls that define the space, but rather the stained deep red, muscular timber trusswork of eight columns and four trusses. Each of the truss frames consists of two or three thick beams – their securing bolts and planks plainly visible – that rest on two inner and on two outer block-like footings, which can also serve as seats. The boarding and glass strips on the underside of the ceiling replicate the delineation of the columns and trusses, underlining the presence of these constructive elements. Without disrupting the overall unity of the space, the four large red truss frames subdivide the space much like a basilica. It has a narrow side aisle to the south, from which one reaches the chapel, with the sacristy on its left and the confessional on its right. From the narrow side aisle to the north one reaches the small baptistry. It has a broad central nave with the altar, a choir and pews, which are arranged on three sides around the round altar table and can accommodate about 200 persons.

The Brother Claus Church in Graz is one of the few examples of more recent sacred architecture that does not adhere to the prevailing penchant for empty white walls or the customary mysticism of glass and light in all colours of the rainbow. Rather, the building – in which the unity of structure and decoration is so self-evident that no one would think to question whether the structure is decorative or decoration structural – stands in the Catholic tradition of a wondrous, joyous, almost baroque exuberance, of which there are numerous examples in the Steiermark. It is not without reason that architectural critics have praised the building as being “refreshingly anarchic” and “orderly in its disarray”.

Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt Graz, Forum Stadtpark Graz (Ed.): Architektur-Investitionen. »Grazer Schule«. 13 Standpunkte, Graz 1986, pp. 108-, p. 163 | The Architectural Review, no. 12/1988, pp. 66- | Architecture and Urbanism, no. 4/1986, pp. 32- and no. 7/1990, pp. 109- | Architektur Aktuell, no. 121/1987, p. XI | Architektur und Bauforum, no. 139/1990, pp. 24- | Architektur und Wettbewerbe, no. 133/1988, p. 11 | L’Architettura Cronache e Storia, no. 402/1989, pp. 278- and no. 422/1990, pp. 875- | Archithese, no. 5/1988, p. 47, p. 50 | Bauwelt, no. 30/1988, cover, pp. 1248- | Bergthaler, Wolfgang (Ed. et al.): Funktion und Zeichen. Kirchenbau in der Steiermark seit dem II. Vatikanum, Graz and Budapest 1992, p. 46, p. 93, pp. 190- | Blundell Jones, Peter: Dialogues in Time. New Graz Architecture, Graz 1998, pp. 180- | Bruder-Klaus-Pfarre Graz-Ragnitz (Ed.): Die Bruder-Klaus-Kirche in Graz-Ragnitz, Graz 1989 | Chiesa Oggi, no. 9/1994, pp. 52- | Deutsche Bauzeitschrift, no. 8/1989, p. 1010 | Deutsche Bauzeitung, no. 2/1992, p. 35 | Faith and Form, no. Spring/1993, pp. 32- | Flagge, Ingeborg (Ed.): Jahrbuch für Licht und Architektur 1993, Berlin 1994, pp. 183- | Gleiniger, Andrea: Szyszkowitz und Kowalski. 1973-1993, Tübingen and Berlin 1994, pp. 140- | Krafft, Anthony (Ed.): Architecture Contemporaine, Vol. 11 1989/1990, Paris 1989, pp. 268- | Kunst und Kirche, no. 2/1989, pp. 92- | Parametro, no. 151/152/1986, p. 54 | Techniques et Architecture, no. 394/1991, pp. 78- | Zentralvereinigung der Architekten Österreichs Landesverband Steiermark (Ed.): Architektur in Graz 1980-1987, Graz and Vienna 1987, p. 33

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Originally published in: Rudolf Stegers, Sacred Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2008.