(BDT_08_079) Typologies of Sacred Buildings

Description

Churches

In comparison to residential, office or theatre architecture – with which it shares certain similarities with regard to the relationship between event and participation – modern church architecture is peculiarly complex. From a functional point of view, a church has “only” two spaces: a room for the church service and a room for preparing the church service. However, the symbolic qualities and continuity of the tradition of Christian sacred architecture stand in sharp contrast to the simplicity of the facts. In no other architectural task is the continuing validity of old or even ancient solutions – leaving aside large parts of the richness of its imagery – so apparent.

In terms of the arrangement of plan, buildings for church services can be divided into two basic types: the axial-processional arrangement and the centralised arrangement. Processional buildings do not have to be long; they need only exhibit a certain directionality, axiality and eccentricity. Centralised buildings need not be round; they need only exhibit a circular movement, be radial or concentric.

Since the days of Emperor Constantine’s “conversion” to Christianity, the processional arrangement has dominated Christian architecture in western Europe, and the centralised arrangement that of eastern Europe. That said, the two forms have never been clearly separated; the choice of plan for a church was never limited solely to the rectangular, on the one hand, or the cross-shaped, circular or square, on the other. The ever expanding possibilities offered by new materials and forms of construction since the Industrial Revolution has made almost anything possible. As such, the second half of the 20th century has seen the boundaries between the two become more fluid, though this does not mean that the often extravagant architecture is any less certain about its appropriateness for the liturgical ceremony.

The 51 case studies collected here are divided primarily into churches that are either axial or centralised, with three further examples for each of the categories cathedrals / large churches, for double churches and for monasteries and convents, although these too could be classified as axial or centralised. Strong axiality can be seen in the projects by Alvar Aalto and Álvaro Siza, less pronounced axiality in the work of Juha Leiviskä and Steven Holl. Strongly centralised geometry can be seen in Trevor Dannatt’s and Anssi Lassila’s projects, subtler centralised arrangements in the work of Paulo Archias Mendes da Rocha and Raffaele Cavadini.

Of the cathedrals / large churches, José Rafael Moneo’s cathedral can be regarded as processional, Renzo Piano’s as centralised. There are three types of double churches. In Augusto Romano Burelli and Paola Gennaro’s church, the church hall can be divided, in Johannes Kister, Reinhard Scheithauer and Susanne Gross’ church, two halls are combined in a single building, in Manuel Pauli’s project two church halls are provided in a complex with two buildings.

Synagogues

Up until its destruction by the Romans in the year 70 according to the Christian calendar, the temple on Mount Moria in Jerusalem was the actual centre of Jewish religious activities. Although synagogues had been built in the same location after the destruction of the First Temple in the year 586 before the Christian Era, they only began to be built in increasing numbers after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, of which only one wall survived that is today known as the “Wailing Wall”.

For the Jews, only the site of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Torah, the five Books of Moses, are considered holy. With the exception of the First and the Second Temple, a synagogue is not a consecrated building. It is merely a substitute for the Temple, which – according to the Orthodox Jews – will at some point in the distant future be rebuilt on its original site after the return of the Messiah. The synagogue has three functions: as a “bet ha knesset”, a house of assembly, as a “bet ha tefillah”, a house of prayer and as a “bet ha midrash”, a house of study for the Torah and Talmud.

Ever since the loss of the temple, the Jewish service excludes any kind of symbolic offering. The ritual is dedicated purely to the word, whether written, spoken or sung. To adapt a thought by the religious philosopher Schalom Ben-Chorin, one could call the sermon the “words of God speaking”. The climax and heart of the ritual is the reading from the Torah. For this purpose the Torah is first removed from the “aron ha-kodesh”, the holy shrine, and laid on the “bimah”, a lectern.

In all synagogues, the aron ha-kodesh stands against the mizrah wall – which faces Jerusalem – while the bimah is placed differently according to regional tradition. In the orthodox Ashkenazi synagogues in central and eastern Europe, it stands in the centre of the space, the seating arranged on three sides around it. In the orthodox Sephardi synagogues in western and southern Europe, the bimah stands in front of the west wall with the seating arranged along both sides leaving an axis open between the shrine on the east wall and bimah on the west wall. In the later synagogues of reformed or liberal Jewish congregations – for example in the new synagogues by Zvi Hecker in Duisburg and by Wandel Hoefer Lorch Hirsch in Dresden – the aron ha-kodesh and bimah stand on a small podium in front of the mizrah wall.

Except for in the United States, new synagogues are built only very rarely. This restraint can be attributed to the fact that Jews do not view a building solely for the purpose of conducting a service – replete with sacred character and large organ – as being essential for religious life. In Germany, however, the building of new synagogues has more recently been undertaken with renewed vigour. Synagogue architecture in Germany also serves a memorial function, as for political and moral reasons the memory of the Shoah is always present.

Mosques

Of all the buildings created for the purpose of worship by the Abrahamic religions, the mosque has the most clearly defined structure. If one leaves aside historical and regional differences and its associated social and cultural functions – which often account for the greater proportion of its overall area – the mosque itself is an almost empty space for prayer. Unlike churches or synagogues, the mosque is almost entirely free of primary elements that define its spatial arrangement. The only determinants that should be realised in any design are the qibla wall and mihrab, the main wall that faces towards Mecca and the niche located in the centre of this wall.

As can be seen in the Bin Madiya Mosque by Alexandros N. Tombazis in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in many cases a conflict results between the direction of the qibla wall and the surrounding urban network of roads and flight lines. As a result, mosques with an internal space that is rotated diagonally out of the grid with several smaller rooms arranged around its four sides are particularly widespread.

After decades of clandestine existence, mostly in the form of “backroom mosques”, Muslims are now gradually establishing their own roots and home in Europe. It is no coincidence that recent examples of mosque architecture have gone largely unnoticed by the architectural press. In most cases, the Muslim communities wish to see their new mosque resemble forms from the architectural canon of their homelands. The traditional oriental vocabulary is often regarded by western architects as being “historicist”. However, those architects who view the calligraphy and ornamentation on the walls and ceilings of mosques – a product of the Islamic prohibition of figurative representation – purely from a modernist viewpoint fail to appreciate the specific qualities of the Islamic culture.

The eight case studies collected here show examples of new mosques that attempt to mediate between the architectural tradition of countries from Morocco to Pakistan and modernist tendencies in countries in Europe and America. A leading example in this respect is the Ismaili Centre in Lisbon, Portugal, by Raj Rewal. Its unity of structure and decoration – in which surface is far more than mere superficial covering – provides an answer to the question of how Islamic architecture could develop in Europe.

Crematoria and Chapels of Rest

Whether above or below ground, whether on a hill or in a cave, whether in cells or temples, places for the dead are among the oldest buildings mankind has ever built. In archaic societies only places for the dead had any permanence and these were often lavishly constructed in preparation for the afterlife. By contrast, in the 20th century – an age in which, according to cultural commentators, death is largely “repressed” – the production of cemeteries was of little interest to the architectural avantgarde. Only in countries such as Spain, Italy and the south of France did architects repeatedly show interest in designing cemeteries or tombs. Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Mausoleum in the cemetery at San Vito d’Altivole, Italy and Aldo Rossi’s extension of the San Cataldo cemetery in Modena, Italy, testify to this spirit.

With regard to the building of crematoria, the situation is much the same. Historically, the crematorium is a relatively recent building type; the first was built in 1876 in Milan, the second in 1878 in Gotha, Germany. Between the 1880s and the 1960s, the Roman Catholic church prohibited any manifestation of cremation. Accordingly very few master builders of this period turned their attention to the design of crematoria. Of those who have successfully tackled the problem of unifying and separating the sacred above and in the foreground and the technical below and in the background, one can count the work of Peter Behrens in Hagen, Fritz Schumacher in Dresden, Clemens Holzmeister in Vienna and Erik Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm.

The six examples here represent places of celebration and of mourning, whether in crematoria or in cemeteries. However, absent from the texts, plans and photos are descriptions of the technical facilities that are necessarily a part of such buildings. The crematorium by Fumihiko Maki in Nakatsu, Japan, on the one hand, and by Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank in Berlin on the other illustrate the differences between the burial and cremation rituals in Asia and Europe.