Description

In close proximity to an underground station, concave and convex high-rise buildings from the seventies and a series of office and commercial buildings built in the nineties, the church in “Donau City” is placed diagonally on the three-quarter roundel of a plaza produced by the forking of two roads. The rectangular volume consciously avoids any competition with the vertical architecture of its immediate surroundings.

As a result, at first glance, the angular building is almost inconspicuous. It is a volume made of concrete, a half cube with dimensions 21.5 by 21.5 by 10.75 metres. Its four external walls are clad in chromium steel panels that reflect a black, blue or brown colour, and are arranged horizontally, underlining the form of the building. Almost all of the 100 panels, each 2.7 by 1.35 metres in size, are punctured by a grid of fine holes as well as smaller and larger round windows. These flush “portholes”, as well as glazed cutouts in the corners of the building, allow light into the interior. The entrance to the church is placed on the corner. Silvery double doors open to the left and right of one of these cutouts, which is signified from outside by a portal and pool.

Hard and cold on the outside, warm and gentle in the interior, dark coloured on the outside, light on the inside: this opposition breathes life into the church. The maple floor, birch walls and, in particular, the numerous round windows create a space of almost baroque quality. The pews, grouped in three sharply defined sections, are arranged around a raised dais with the altar slightly off-centre, the ambo and the sedilia, whose forms are pared back to the minimum. Made of syenite, the colour of the altar varies between grey and black. An elongated slot of skylight opens above the block of the altar; a stretched S-shaped gash, whose form is intended to denote the wound inflicted on Christ’s heart. To the left and to the right behind the altar table, two partly glazed, partly wood-covered cutouts define two further spaces in the corners, the first for the font, the second for the stele with the tabernacle and eternal light. In front of the altar and the pews, hidden in the wall, is a small room for the confessional as well as an entry and exit for the priests.

The sacristy and the rooms for the parish are located on the lower floor. The sloping nature of the site, barely perceptible from outside, makes it possible to locate the secular functions where one cannot see them from the plaza. In addition, the sloping ground has been exploited to raise the belfry to the left of the entrance, reached by a flight of grassed stairs, and a triangular cutout courtyard to the right to allow light into the lower floor.

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