Sumit Singhal Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination.
St. Trinitatis church in Leipzig, Germany by Schulz und Schulz
August 19th, 2020 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Schulz und Schulz
The benediction of the church on 9 May 2015 ended the odyssey of the Leipzig parish community that has lasted over seventy years. Its permanent return to the centre of the city is manifested in the construction of the new St. Trinitatis church. ‘This will not remain solitary in foreign surroundings. It stretches its arms out to the city and gives itself to the city as a gift,’ summarizes Pope Francis in his greeting. For us as architects it was important to develop the new parish church out of the organism of the surrounding city. It obtains its presence through its high church building structure and church tower, but most of all through the inviting openness of the parish courtyard. With its building envelope made of masoned Rochlitz porphyry, the structure acknowledges its region and tradition. The sustainable building concept reflects the client’s wish for the careful interaction with creation. In his encyclical Laudato Si’ (Praise Be to You), which was published just a few days after the benediction of the parish church in Leipzig, Pope Francis defines the environment as ‘a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone. If we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all.’2 (Pope Francis 2015, Chapter Two, paragraph 95).
Background
The first Leipzig Trinitatis church was completed in the direct vicinity of Leipzig’s Old Town in 1847. It was heavily damaged in World War II during the bombings of the city of Leipzig. Merely the external walls and church toward remained. The ruins were blasted in 1954 with the promise of a new beginning for the community in a larger church. The building permit that had already been issued was then withdrawn by the SED (Socialist Unity Party) government and the construction site was cleared by the city administration.
From then on the community primarily made use of the St. Pauli parish church at Leipzig’s Augustusplatz as an ‘interim solution’. Yet even this church that had remained undestroyed for the most part during World War II was blasted in 1968 at the request of the city administration of Leipzig and replaced with new buildings for the university as the expression of political power structures. What followed for the Catholic parish community was an odyssey as a guest in in various church buildings of the city.
It was not until the end of the 1970s that the plans for a second Trinitatis church were taken up once again. The community was assigned a plot of land for the new building in a location outside of the Leipzig city centre with poor traffic connections according to the plans of the Bauakademie der DDR (Building Academy of the German Democratic Republic). An unremarkable functional building was created there under the direction of Udo Schultz by 1982 but due to poor foundation conditions it was already demonstrating significant structural defects just a few years later. These could only have been renovated at significant financial expense and nevertheless would not have satisfied the community’s wish to have a stronger presence in the centre of the city. Against this backdrop the community entered into negotiations for a potential new building plot with the city of Leipzig in 2008. The result was a joint decision to make use of an unused plot of land on Nonnenmühlgasse in the direct vicinity of the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) and Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz, not far from the location of the first Trinitatis church.
Our design was awarded 1st prize in the 2009 competition.
Urban space concept
The task was to define a site in a prominent location between the dominating skyline feature of the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) and the square at Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz that respectfully integrates into its surroundings and forms a clearly distinguishable edge along the urban square as well as the city centre ring. The structure is now being put up with the ‘pouring’ of the triangular plot of land and the concreting of the poles of the church interior and church tower on opposite sides. The parish courtyard was cut into the area between the two highpoints to create a new central meeting location. The silhouettes of the church and town hall define an urban development gateway along the rising topography of the Martin-Luther-Ring that marks the beginning of the further development of the neighbouring urban area with the urban railway station at Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz, the future Monument to Freedom and Unity and the Nonnenmühlgasse area.
Building concept
The new structure is based on the principle of self-sufficient activity, which corresponds the holistic interaction with the environment. The familiar standards of a long service life as well as comfort were scrutinised for this and re-evaluated in terms of their respective necessity. The focus of this was not only on potential savings during the use of the building but rather on the comprehensive evaluation of the production through its life cycle to its auditability and removal. As a result of comprehensive examinations, traditional, regional, renewable and long-life materials were harmonised and preferred over individual technical high-performance components. This makes the new parish church a multidimensional urban living space that enriches the surrounding city in multiple ways, promotes biodiversity, strengthens cultural identity and provides the majority (76 percent) of the resources required for its use (electricity, heat, water) itself.
Church hall
The new Trinitatis church is defined by the elements of the church hall, parish courtyard, community centre and church tower, which are primarily characterised by light and (ceiling) height. With its interior height of 14.50 metres, the church hall enables a transcendent spatial experience that is further intensified by the large skylight located 22 metres high. Daylight of varying intensity falls from this along the rear wall of the altar in the church hall and defines the atmosphere of the hall. Another important element of the church hall is the large ground-level church window (by artist Falk Haberkorn) that produces communication between the communication and the city as if through an interactive store window. Across from the window inside is the weekday chapel. The organ is a third ‘place of pronouncement’ that is clearly visible in the gallery and positioned to the left of the altar and the ambo. The church hall expands upward to the gallery through the open overhead space and offers room for the choir and additional pews to be set up here. The church hall is situated crosswise across the shorter side of the room and creates sufficient room for the arrangement of the community in an open surrounding area whose optical and scenographic centre is the chancel. Partitions separating the community were eliminated, additionally opening the chancel as a multidimensional space usable for various forms of liturgy. Merely a gentle slope (from the entrance to the altar) surrounds the chancel, thereby following the arrangement of the pews and permitting optimal visual perspectives.
Liturgical paths
The chancel is connected by five paths to the portal and the baptismal font, the location where the Madonna is positioned, the church window (to the city), the tabernacle and the chapel. These paths divide the rows of pews of the open surrounding area into six segments. The church hall is entered through the main portal of the church near which the baptismal font is positioned in order to remind the community of the sacrament of baptism even when entering the church hall. The baptismal font also serves the community as a central holy water stoup at the same time. Across from the large cross on the rear wall of the altar (by artists Jorge Pardo) is a second cross carved into the large wall area above the gallery as a negative imprint that opens the church hall to the light of the setting sun in the west.
A special element of the church hall is the large church window that inspires curiosity and allows for individual approach in accordance with the missionary concept of the community. It opens and delimits the church hall at the same time while serving as a targeted opening as an interface between the world of the profane and the realm of the sacred. The consequent hermetic openness of the church hall generates the opening desired by the community and guarantees a minimum amount of closure necessary in order to enable the important entry, peace and concentration. The design and form of the window were developed within the framework of an international art competition.
Facade
By using Rochlitz porphyry we are continuing a tradition of construction of the city of Leipzig, such as with the Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall), and of the region, such as with the Benediktinerkloster zum Heiligen Kreuz (Benedictine Priory of the Holy Cross) in Wechselburg. The horizontal layering of the various heights firmly anchors the building with the plot of land and allows it to symbolically grow out of the ground. The projections and recesses in the layering convey the rich tradition of the regional architecture into an independent contemporary building of particular emotional value.
2 Excerpt from the encyclical Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis on the care for our common home. Press Office of the Holy See, Rome, 2015.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, August 19th, 2020 at 7:21 am.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
