Description

Bounded by a rocky ridge to the north and a country road to the south, the church stands in the middle of Aigen. The building is part of a constellation that includes the old village square and a new church square, with a stream separating the two. Three steel and timber gangways connect the two spaces. Built on a polygonal floor plan that deliberately avoids any obvious axiality or symmetry but nevertheless has a clear front and back, the building opens more towards the south and west and is more closed to the north and east. The earth and grass green roof lies like a tortoise shell over the building. Its supporting trusses and shell rest on walls on the north and east sides, on columns to the south and west. A projecting white steel plate rim runs around the perimeter roof like the edging of a plate.

Arriving from the west side, one enters a structure that appears to glow with a brownish, sometimes reddish colour. The architectural space is that of a compressed and distorted hexagon and it is enclosed by seven walls: three walls to the south, one glazed wall on the west side, two to the north and a concrete wall on the east side. A framework of thin steel members supports the full-height glazing: each of the cells in the grid contains a transparent reflective pane and a transparent insulating pane on the inside, then, slightly offset and mounted on a system of rails, coloured plates of antique glass that can be shifted or replaced, resulting in a wall whose colour and pattern can be changed at will.

One of the concrete walls has been given a distinctive red “al fresco” rendering; this dual-layer “thick wall” contains a recess for the organ, space for the confessional box and the staircase for roof access. Light wood surfaces – birch above, maple below – give the room warmth. The roof-height from the entrance to the altar rises from 4.2 to 7.1 metres; the floor level ramps downwards by a full half metre. The pews are arranged on this slope in two compact groups. A broad flat podium emphasises the glass shrine of the altar.

The spatial experience of St Florian’s church is characterised not just by two competing axes – the line of the fold in the ceiling and the line of the aisle in the direction of the altar – but by a subtle sense of circular gyration to the right. This rotational movement begins outside with the stream that flows from the south northwards and eastwards, continues with the diagonal orientation of the entrance lobby and the gentle curve of the pews and is most powerful when the seated congregation watch the celebrants and servers walk over from the sacristy towards the podium and the altar.

The presbytery is located in front of the church on the right, the 32.2 metre high bell tower on the left. Panes of roughcast glass encase the skeletal form of the bell tower. A covered passage leads between the three volumes under the green roof and, not least due to the sloping walls and different materials and colours, exhibits a dynamism of its own.

The Architectural Review, no. 4/1992, pp. 70- | Architektur Aktuell, no. 147/1992, pp. 62- | Architekturzentrum Wien (Ed.): Architektur in Österreich im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert, exhibition catalogue, Basel 2006, p. 239 | L’Architettura Cronache e Storia, no. 452/1993, pp. 448- | Architettura e spazio sacro nella modernità, Exhibition catalogue, Milan 1992, p. 261 | Becker, Annette (Ed. et al.): Architektur im 20. Jahrhundert. Österreich, exhibition catalogue, Munich and New York 1995, pp. 236- | Bergthaler, Wolfgang (Ed et al.): Funktion und Zeichen. Kirchenbau in der Steiermark seit dem II. Vatikanum, Graz and Budapest 1992, pp. 93-, pp. 204- | Blundell Jones, Peter: Dialogues in Time. New Graz Architecture, Graz 1998, pp. 184- | Chiesa Oggi, no. 22/1996, pp. 28- | Deutsche Bauzeitschrift, no. 1/1994, pp. 35- | Volker Giencke. Projekte, Vienna and New York 2001, pp. 60- | Glasforum, no. 2/1994, pp. 15- | Kunst und Kirche, no. 2/1995, pp. 122- | Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa: Achtung Architektur! Image and Phantasm in Contemporary Austrian Architecture, Cambridge / Massachusetts and London 1996, p. 59, pp. 62- | Stock, Wolfgang Jean (Ed.): European Church Architecture 1950-2000, Munich 2002, pp. 90- | Techniques et Architecture, no. 405/1992, pp. 76-

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