Lewerentz's Churches

Some architects have a shtick; Gehry's facades twist and contort, Asplund favored the cylinder-and-box and Calatrava shows an affinity for parabolic curves. To be fair, the word "shitck" is unfair - these and other architects attach themselves to a concept not out of a lack of creativity but out of a drive to develop a single concept. The concept rarely manifests itself and resolves itself in a single building and, indeed, wouldn't that be a confirmation of the idea's limitations?

An idea's development over several buildings merits study in that way. We tend to study building by building and ignore the architect as the generator and developer of the single idea and how that idea connects several buildings. This is harder to do with contemporary architects, specifically the big name firms, since multiple projects are tackled simultaneously with several different project architects to the point where the firm's namesake is largely uninvolved in the process after the initial concept phase. This makes a single concept difficult to trace over more than a single building.

So, when we look at the work of a mid-century architect, such as Sigurd Lewerentz, who had a small firm and did much of the designing himself, we see how he works out a certain idea in his pair of churches, St. Mark's in Bjorkhagen, Sweden and St. Peter's in Klippan, Sweden.  St. Mark's was completed in 1963 and St. Peter's followed soon after in 1966.  Both churches feature brick ubiquitously, a trend common at the time and made internationally famous by Alvar Aalto. 

St. Mark's congregational space

St. Peter's congregational space

Lewerentz bathes his churches in brick - every surface is faced in brick which, if it weren't for gravity, might be quite disorienting. A space which features brick on every surface demonstrates some off acoustic properties. When speaking in a soft voice, the sound falls dead, causing the speaker to raise their voice. Of course, if you speak loudly enough, the brick picks up the sound and throws in around the space. I believe that Lewerentz used brick to create intimacy within his churches.

St. Mark's is a deceptively tall space. The coolness of the brick and general absence of light give the impression of a cave, but the reverberation of sound betrays the high ceiling. St. Peter's ceiling is noticeably lower, leading me to believe that Lewerentz intended this church to achieve the intimacy that St. Mark's does not fully realize.

The difference of the ceiling between the two buildings evidences a refining process similar to that of the brick. At St. Mark's Lewerentz used a profile of large and small arches arranged end-to-end. The profile shifts over at the other end of the ceiling, creating multiple vaults that alternately taper and widen along the entire ceiling. Brick is also used here as a facer, with the only visible structure being the face of steel eye-beams showing through at the nodes of each arch. 

Ceiling vault in St. Mark's

At St. Peter's Lewerentz pushes the ceiling one step further by placing the shifted profile in the middle, so that the ceiling is symmetrical about the center line.  The discreetness of the height change in the middle hides the true nature of the kink itself, but by studying the taper and looking at either end of the ceiling, one can derive the geometry of the entire arrangement.

Ceiling vault in St. Peter's

 Lewerentz also makes a conscious depart from St. Mark's by included a giant reminder of the structure that holds up the entire ceiling.

The ceiling center and eye beam tree at St. Peter's

This eye-beam assemblage aroused debate among the group as to whether or not Lewerentz included the structure intentionally, or out of necessity. The argument favoring necessity looks to St Mark's, where the structure was very carefully hidden, leading one to believe that unresolvable issues with the ceiling at St. Peter's required Lewerentz to include the huge eye beam tree. Conversely, I believe that the ceiling vault was too important to Lewerentz for him to do something as careless as slapping a bunch of eye beams under it without very deliberate intention. Although the main congregational space in St. Mark's is more rectangular than St. Peter's, their square footage is roughly similar, so I find it difficult to believe that Lewerentz needed the eye beams to hold up his ceiling, therefore, I find the move to be deliberate.

This debate could not have occurred with such clarity of argument without a St. Mark's to derive evidence from. Our visit to and understanding of St. Mark's allowed us to greater appreciate and absorb the mysteries and complexities of St. Peter's. That we visited them in the order in which they were made was a bonus.