St. Moritz Church
Moritzpl. 5, 86150 Augsburg, Germany
John Pawson (2011-13)
You may not be able to visit a John Pawson designed house, but you can certainly visit this totally renovated and re-imagined church in Germany, approximately a one hour drive from Munich. Stripping back, cleaning up, re-surfacing and adding the cleanest palest of materials, Pawson has lifted the interior out of its historic straitjacket to a seemingly ethereal realm. The thin slices of onyx replacing the existing glass of the apse window completely reinforces this feeling.
Pawson explains that:
‘The church of St Moritz has been through many changes since its foundation nearly a thousand years ago. Devastating fires, changes in liturgical practice, aesthetic evolution and wartime bombing have each left their mark on the fabric of the building. The purpose of this latest intervention has been to retune the existing architecture, from aesthetic, functional and liturgical perspectives, with considerations of sacred atmosphere always at the heart of the project. The work has involved the meticulous paring away of selected elements of the church’s complex fabric and the relocation of certain artefacts, to achieve a clearer visual field. Drawing on existing forms and elements of vocabulary, an architectural language has evolved that is recognisable in subtle ways as something new, yet has no jarring foreign elements.’
Before Images
Further Information:
Place: Moritzkirche
Designer: John Pawson
Photographer: Hufton + Crow + Jens Weber (before images)
Review: Dezeen (31 July 2013) + Architectural Record (16 May 2014)
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