pilgrimage church, maria königin des friedens, neviges, germany 1963-1972.
architect: gottfried böhm, b.1920.
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climbing the stairs and galleries that surround the cavernous main space, I found that böhm himself had not settled with accommodating the masses for the pilgrimage which was once a mass event - he had made room for those who must observe things at a distance, in private or within an intimate group of people: he had made room for the individual. and he had done so by offering several priviliged positions from which to witness the ceremonies, the most dramatic of which reminded me of caspar david friedrich's Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, the portrait of a lone mountaineer or artist pondering the sublime.
böhm so clearly connected postwar modernity with german romanticism, not just expressionism.
german spirituality is a thing largely forgotten today. the production of cars have taken its place. the cruel parody of german philosophy and culture which served as a justification of nazism saw to that. after 1945, everybody wanted a materialist germany, not least the germans.
somehow, you cannot think about german culture without returning to the wars.
gottfried böhm's father, dominikus, had been the leading catholic church architect of the reconstruction following WWI. his works are extremely diverse, spanning expressionism, stark romanesque historicism and the most clearheaded modernist sachlichkeit.
gottfried himself, in turn, became a leading church architect of the reconstruction after WWII, his works even more diverse, harder to pin down, than those of his father. but he only came that far after serving on the eastern front early in the war. he was injured and returned to germany where he studied sculpture and architecture, nazi style, in münchen.
today, his sons are talented church architects, even if their production is considerably smaller than that of the two previous generations, no doubt owing to the delay in the arrival of WWIII...
the paradox which is gottfried böhm - politically conservative, religious, yet radically modern - was born out of this: the continuity of the bourgeois dynasty, the family of religious architects, and the inescapable and violent reaction to his war time experiences, be they on the battlefield or in the nazi controlled classrooms of the academy in münchen.
there can be no doubt that he felt a new language of building had to be developed after the collapse - and not least moral collapse - of german culture. but the new language was used to insist that a church was a spiritual building and not some embarrassed, abstract construct presented by the atheist architect to the ignorant masses; it was used to uphold the idea that german postwar culture could not be reduced to the materialism of the wirtschaftswunder.
being an atheist materialist myself with no talent for community and little trust in institutions, I have to say this: böhm's position was not self-evident. it was at heart, I believe, a position of opposition; a quixotic critique of modernity coming from the right; an insistence on continuity conducted with modernist means.
and what means...
for what we might term böhm's heroic period from the late 50's to the early 70's, he was surely a member of that other tradition of modern architecture we usually connect with people like aalto, erskine, utzon in the north and häring and scharoun in germany - equally for the experimenting compositions and constructions as for his sensitivity to use, to site, and to the relationship between the individual and the institutions his buildings represent.
but for böhm, the language of architecture remained in a state of flux. to the onlooker, the diversity of his oeuvre can be bewildering. böhm frustrates our need for the recognizable which may be one of the reasons for the waning interest in his work outside germany. at heart an instinctive architect, he has never subscribed to any theory, nor presented any of his own.
my gottfried böhm set so far.
more words, yada, yada, yada.
Tags: gottfried böhm boehm gottfried böhm pilgrimage church kirche eglise chiesa expressionism expressionist brutalist brutalism concrete beton brut architecture architektur modern modernist modernism german germany deutschland arquitectura arquitetura Architectuur Architettura nevigeser wallfahrtsdom wallfahrtskirche mariendom interior space light darkness jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC
(half of the comments below have been deleted, making a mess of the debate)
villa sørensen, nordre strandvej 53B, elsinore, denmark 1935.
architect: arne jacobsen, 1902-1971.
one of jacobsen's many funkis villas is for sale, the 1935 sørensen villa north of elsinore - neglected by the jacobsen literature, but thankfully less so by its owners. there was a thirty minute open house today and of course, we had to go.
the house is from the years in jacobsen's career when he gave up the superficial modernism of the international style which he had shown he mastered in klampenborg and began building more responsibly and responsively in terms of climate and local traditions. the many original details that have survived since 1935 testify to his success.
you can buy the house here. it is in excellent condition and the price is very decent, if you have that kind of money. (read: if you are not an architect). sadly, the owners felt it necessary to sell off half the garden. jacobsen specifically avoided making a fetish of the sea view here and gave the house fine outdoor spaces on all sides: that balance is gone.
the two doors in the kitchen wing are new - all else in this photo is to my knowledge as jacobsen designed it.
a stitch of three.
more jacobsen.
Tags: arne jacobsen arne jacobsen architect villa house building architecture elsinore helsingør denmark funkis modern modernist modernism arquitectura danish nordic scandinavian architektur arquitetura Architectuur Architettura seier+seier creative commons CC
de danske spritfabrikker, 1929-1931.
architect: alfred cock-clausen.
the architecture of the Danish distillers "danske spritfabrikker" is in a rather elegant neoclassicism. I am guessing the architect was sober, at least until he reached the upper floor.
those round windows make the building look a bit like an owl with a hangover.
Tags: industri industrial architecture arkitektur neoclassicism aalborg denmark danmark classicism facade brick masonry round window seier+seier creative commons CC
...if you're dead, royal and white.
medieval royal tombs at basilique saint-denis. almost all french kings were either buried in saint-denis or their remains were moved there later. the graves were disinterred and destroyed during the french revolution which also closed down the church. they were restored by viollet-le-duc in the 19th century.
getting rid of royalty made sarkozy possible, when you think about it, much the same way the wright brothers unwittingly invented the plane crash.
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Tags: royal tomb grave necropolis basilique saint-denis paris france gothic cathedral cathédrale jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC
if you have a weakness for vaulted spaces, the seven kilometers (4.3 miles) of the aleppo souq will make you very, very happy as it did us.
though built more than a thousand years later than its roman precursor, the basic section of apollodorus' market is still visible here.
the place is alive with everyday trade and everyday goods and not yet a tourist trap like the bazaar we visited in marrakech.
...says ross burns in "monuments of syria", "it is still an animated arab bazaar city where the traditions of the arab middle ages do not seem all that remote. it still (perhaps more than any other city of the levant) works according to the conventions of commercial life unbroken since mameluke times".
EDIT: even to think that this has been lost is too painful. my thoughts go out to the people of aleppo and syria.
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if not, don't.
more from our trip to syria.
Tags: aleppo haleb syria syrien middle east mellemøsten architecture arkitektur souq bazaar vault dome light skylight islamic muslim islam suq bazar market marked Syrie souk building gebäude haus gebouw bouw bygning batiment maison edificio huis casa seier+seier creative commons CC