Description

The Kirchsteigfeld is a new quarter in southeast Potsdam. Built in the late nineties to a plan by Rob Krier and Christoph Kohl, it is designed according to Camillo Sitte’s “artistic principles.” The homogeneity of the urban environment and architecture has a most artificial appearance. The church stands on the south side of the market square, with the intention of forming the spatial as well as spiritual focus of the neighbourhood.

The double-church gives the impression that it has developed out of a four-wing complex. Whilst some of its symmetry has become fragmented in the process of the dissection, apportioning, rotation and re-arrangement of its parts, the building’s form as a whole was never compromised. A rectangular box with a length of 53.9 metres and a proportion of length to breadth of approximately 2:1, its edges and corners are clearly delineated throughout. This is underlined by the consistent treatment of the pale rendered façades: the plinth in dark brown, the two upper storeys with light and dark brown horizontal striping.

The east wing contains a library and music school complete with a small stage; the west wing provides three dwellings; the north and south wings contain further ancillary spaces. These two wedge shapes enclose the church and church tower. On each side of this central building there is a small space open to the sky, one to the east, one to the west. The space next to the tower appears like a tapering passageway, the space next to the church like a small courtyard. A strip of glazed roofing runs around each edge of the 14 metre long sides of this courtyard, emphasising its cloister-like association.

One enters the courtyard through a framework of four tall columns and a crossbar. The entrance to the church is slightly concealed, lying not in the axis but to one side. The church hall is plastered white, its dimensions – 13.3 metres wide and 14.8 metres deep – approximately­ equal to those of the courtyard outside. A white folding partition allows the room to be divided in two for the Protestant and Methodist congregations. The altar, the pulpit, the support for the font and the blue-upholstered seats – all designs by the architect – are made of walnut. The positioning of the altar is unusual: the wall behind the altar table slopes outwards, the room extending upwards, and the tower rises directly out of this square plan. The shaft of the tower is 25 metres, and the spire, which is clad with solar panels, a further 16 metres. Church steeples and pitched roofs are of great significance typologically, making it easier for passers-by to identify a church as a church, without having to guess its functions. The architects’ design follows the tradition of Prussian architecture. The relationship between the whole and the parts of the Church of Reconciliation picks up the legacy of Ludwig Persius, the 19th-century master builder of Potsdam who had a pronounced predilection for the Italianate.

Aión, no. 12/2006, pp. 82- | Augusto Romano Burelli Paola Gennaro. Entwürfe für Potsdam. 1991-2001, exhibition catalogue, Potsdam 2001, pp. 68-, pp.161- | Bauwelt, no. 1/2/1998, p. 6 | Casabella, no. 640/641/1996/1997, pp. 124- | Goetz, Christine, Hoffmann-Tauschwitz, Matthias (Ed.): Kirchen Berlin Potsdam. Führer zu den Kirchen in Berlin und Potsdam, Berlin 2003, p. 230, p. 346 | Kitschke, Andreas: Die Potsdamer Kirchen, Passau 2001, pp. 74- | Krier, Rob, Kohl, Christoph: Potsdam Kirchsteigfeld. Eine Stadt entsteht, Bensheim 1997, p. 17, p. 28, pp. 46-, p. 74, pp. 110-, p. 168- | Wöhler, Till: Neue Architektur. Sakralbauten, (n.p.) Berlin 2005, pp. 64-

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