Description
Together with the abbey church, built in the sixties, the House of Silence frames the entrance to the complex of the Benedictine Königsmünster Abbey. Built over a period of 80 years, the ensemble lies on a high sloping site and is reached from the town via a series of steps. The most recent addition, pushed into the slope of the site, has the appearance of a square-cut monolith, 15 metres wide, 32 metres deep and 13.5 metres high at its upper end. The block consists of a narrow and a wider concrete box, between them a slot approximately 3 metres wide. Five glass passageways bridge the gap over this gorge between the eastward and westward wings of the building. The sharp formal division of the two parts reflects a functional separation between served and serving zones.
The entrance to the House of Silence is at its upper end, diagonally opposite the abbey church. Inside the narrower of the two blocks, a Jacob’s ladder – two flights of stairs arranged one behind the other along the windowless outside wall – descends from the rear of the building. Behind it, occupying part of the ground and lower ground floors is a small chapel. A simple unadorned room for prayer and contemplation, it is faced entirely in concrete. A steel cross stands against the light grey of the rear wall, aligned with the grid of anchor holes in the concrete and lit from above by a hidden rooflight.
The broader of the two blocks houses the guest rooms. The ground and upper floors each contain ten cells sparingly furnished with bed, table and chairs made of oak, although each has a bathroom. The full-height windows – walls, floor and ceiling are all smooth concrete – look west. Narrow vertical hinged metal flaps to the sides of the windows provide ventilation. The rooms for the monks’ and guests’ day-to-day activities are arranged at the lower end of the slope on the two lower floors. These include a few offices, a refectory, a “cloister” and a two-storey high hall with a square plan and view south into an orchard.
Of all the buildings in Königsmünster Abbey – including the chapel, refectory and dormitory previously designed by the architect in the eighties – the new House of Silence is perhaps the most monastic. Everything about it promotes contemplation and reflection. Not only the narrow “pathway tract” but also the broader “existential tract” are characterised by radical reduction. The simplicity of the forms, material and construction emphasise the necessary and the essential. The architecture has an archaic and an ascetic character. Utterly self-immersed, the building is intended not as “a place of this world” but “a place in the world.”
Der Architekt, no. 1/2/2004, pp. 42- | Bauwelt, no. 31/2001, pp. 12- | Beton Prisma, no. 83/2004, pp. 34- | Detail, no. 7/2001, p. 1221 | Domus, no. 849/2002, pp. 44- | Förster, Yorck, Flagge, Ingeborg (Ed.): Peter Kulka. Minimalismus und Sinnlichkeit, exhibition catalogue, Stuttgart and London 2006, pp. 36-, p. 47, pp. 55-, pp. 123- | Frankfurter Allgemeine, 29. 8. 2001, p. 45 | Herzog, Thomas (et al.): Fassaden Atlas, Basel 2004, pp. 112- | Kraft, Sabine: Räume der Stille, Marburg 2007, pp. 59-, p. 106 | Kramm, Rüdiger, Schalk, Tilman (Ed.): Sichtbeton, Betrachtungen. Ausgewählte Architektur in Deutschland, Düsseldorf 2007, pp. 178- | Kunst und Kirche, no. 3/2002, cover, p. 129 | Ludwig, Matthias, Mawick, Reinhard (Ed.): Gottes neue Häuser. Kirchenbau des 21. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, Frankfurt am Main 2007, pp. 56- | M:AI Museum für Architektur und Ingenieurkunst NRW (Ed.): Nordrhein-Westfalen. 60 Jahre Architektur und Ingenieurkunst, exhibition catalogue, (n.p.) Essen 2007, pp. 228-, p. 231 | Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Internationale Ausgabe, 28. 1. 2002, p. 22 | Orte Architekturnetzwerk Niederösterreich, Nitschke, Marcus (Ed.): Raum und Religion. Europäische Positionen im Sakralbau. Deutschland, Österreich, Polen, exhibition catalogue, Salzburg and Munich 2005, p. 49 | The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture, Comprehensive Edition, London 2004, p. 459 | Schwarz, Ullrich (Ed.): New German Architecture. A Reflexive Modernism, exhibition catalogue, Ostfildern-Ruit 2002, pp. 106- | Stock, Wolfgang Jean: Architectural Guide Sacred Buildings in Europe since 1950, Munich 2004, pp. 88- | Wöhler, Till: Neue Architektur. Sakralbauten, (n.p.) Berlin 2005, p. 118-
Drawings
Site plan, the House of Silence to the south, to the north the chapel, refectory and dormitory built in the 1980s
Ground floor
Second floor
Third floor, entrance level
Fourth floor
Longitudinal sectional perspective through the narrow block
Photos
Entrance face opposite the abbey church
Steel and glass bridges between both wings, in the background the abbey church
Originally published in: Rudolf Stegers, Sacred Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2008.