germany

Bruder Klaus Feldkapelle /  by hugo keene

Location: Mechernich, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Architect: Peter Zumthor
Completed: 2007

16 Photographs

When I discovered that our travel route would come near this little field chapel, I confess that I was just a little excited about the prospect of seeing it in the flesh. Probably the smallest building I have visited, and one of the most memorable. It’s a simple timeless primitive little building, squeezed into a narrow slice of buffer land between large swathes of agricultural land. Easy to miss if you’re not looking for it, but impossible to forget.

I love this building so much, I visited it twice within the space of 24 hours. We had arrived at the site late in the day one afternoon and enjoyed the brief time we’d spent there. It was clear then, that the building would feel vastly different closer to the sunrise, so we (I) made the decision to backtrack the following morning and return to the little chapel for another go.

On the two occasions we visited, we approached the structure first from the back (the wrong way?) and the following day, from the front (the right way?), and then returning back along a series of alternative routes, so we saw and watched the building from four unique angles. One of the most intriguing aspects this revealed is the way the long narrow plan means that the tower profile changes as you move around it, at first appearing flat and squat, from the sides when viewed at a distance, before becoming almost impossibly slender when viewed from the front or the back, the only way you can approach the building up close. In doing so, it plays a game with scale, reducing the relative scale of the structure, by adjusting and controlling your perception of it. It is very clever.

The way the concrete is cast, it literally feels like it is hewn from the very earth it sits on. It is the rawest concrete structure I have ever seen outside of a farmyard. The texture and layering of it looks and feels more like rammed earth, or some of the more undulating textures of the work of Tadao Ando at Chichu. It feels at once immediate, agrarian, and utilitarian, while at the same time beautifully crafted. There is a considered roughness to nearly everything, put into distinct contrast by the fineness of the finishing details. As the effect of its production on the climate is now understood, today we have a more complicated relationship with traditional concrete, yet it has always been a construction material that has fascinated me with its enormous potential. I feel like this modest little chapel is a grand example of concrete at its finest.

Inside, it has the feeling of a simple primitive place for reflection and, if you’re that way inclined, prayer. I have always loved to drop into little churches and chapels along the way wherever they pop out along the roadside, and this felt similar in that way. If it were not for the buzz of similarly inclined travelers such as myself hovering in and out and breaking the calm, it could easily be forgotten that this is a masterpiece drawing visitors from far and wide.

HWLK

Maria, Königin des Friedens (Pilgrimage Church of Neviges) /  by hugo keene

Location: Neviges, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Architect: Gottfried Böhm
Completed: 1968

14 Photographs

When I tell non-architect friends about these journeys, sometimes way off the beaten path to look at often quite obscure buildings, they nearly always look at me rather quizzically, as if they can’t understand why I would devote my time to do such a thing. On those rare occasions that I take someone not otherwise inclined along, almost without fail they inevitably understand. Sometimes buildings are so special, so beautiful and so unique, that it is impossible not to be overcome by and to viscerally experience that power.

Maria, Königin des Friedens (The Pilgrimage Church of Neviges) is one of those buildings. Hidden away in an unassuming part of Germany, squeezed between narrow streets and tucked behind a bunch of things, it’s easily missed, even if you’re looking for it. The kind of building where you catch a glimpse over a roof top, around a corner, between a tree and a lamp post, like a leopard in the trees, hard to catch a glimpse of, let alone figure out what it is. Even from the piazza out front and up close, though utterly original, it does not really reveal its secrets.

It is only on entering the dark cool space, through the giant portal door, that you find yourself in another world, utterly transformed from the one outside, and impossible to describe in words. I love the pictures, especially these ones, but nothing beats standing in a building like this.

Most times, you visit a building only once, but other times, like with a garden, you want to see it in another light, another time of day or another season.

The pilgrimage church is like that, I’ll definitely be back. 

HWLK

Neue Staatsgalerie /  by hugo keene

Neue Staatsgalerie - Stuttgart, Germany - Architect: James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates - Completed: 1984

12 Photographs

If any building sits at the heart of my fascination with architecture, then the Neue Staatsgalerie is probably it. Not because it’s the best building I’ve visited (it isn’t) or because I particularly love post-modernism (I don’t), but in a similar way to the cemetery at San Cataldo, it came to me at a time in my education when I needed tinder for the lonely sparks of architectural inspiration that I was experiencing.

In my third year at university, I was designing a sunken plaza in Adelaide and my tutor saw my rough model of intertwined shapes and bright colours and sent me off to the library to find this strange fascination he’d described. This was before we had the internet and a hundred images at our fingertips, but after an exhaustive search of architectural books, I found it. As first I was enthralled by the bold colours and exciting geometry, but soon discovered and began to appreciate how the interlocking and interconnected spaces defined the visitors experience of the place by creating possibilities that seemed random, but actually were intimately connected to the building user and their experience.

Despite all this, I had never been in a hurry to visit. Somehow, I knew it would come at some point and it happened organically, while travelling through Germany on a camping holiday. I visited twice, over the course of two days, and the first time I took no pictures nor drew any lines. It was the afternoon, and I walked the place up and down, back to front, inside and out. The next morning, I returned with my camera and took a set of photographs.

It is rare to visit a building and not be disappointed in some way, no matter how exciting or brilliant the building is, but I found it hard to be disappointed by the Neue Staatsgalerie. I knew her faults, like a sometimes irritating old friend that you love at all times regardless, and visiting was a little like coming home. I have visited many buildings before this one and I’m glad I waited, because strangely I don’t think I would have appreciated it like I did.

It was worth the wait.

HWLK