Religious Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

The city of Colmar, France is undertaking the expansion of The Unterlinden Museum with the annexation of an Art Nouveau building that once housed the city’s municipal baths. The 1906 building stands just meters away from the current museum. Its addition will bring the current museum to an area of 8,000 square meters, which will allow works that are currently stored in the museum’s vaults to be displayed to the public. The design team is led by Herzog & de Meuron and is scheduled for completion in September, 2013.

Read on for more after the break.

In the competition for the church of Våler, Krill Architecture focused on a concept of an open ring in the woods. Tapping on a source of collective creativity in modern architecture, their design offers the chance to bring the development of church architecture to a new level. A building combining monumentality to accessibility, openness to spirituality, is awesome, while being friendly. In short: a church fitting in this time. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Last week, we shared a great series of modular summer residences by Visiondivision that ranged from a small cabin to a massive castle. In the meantime, the firm has also been working on a competition proposal to replace a church in Våler, a small Norwegian town, after a devastating fire. For a firm that typically takes a standard design approach and then reinvents it or inverts it to form a completely new paradigm, we were impressed by their ability to bring a simplistic elegance to this religious structure.

More about the church after the break.

As an attempt to translate the history and dignity this space possesses, the design proposal for the New Våler Church by Martina Engblom & Ragnar Eythorsson presents visitors with an upraised monolithic structure, calling attention to what lies underneath to create a space for reflection. In calling attention to its existance, or lack there of, the substructural remains of the old church becomes the presumption for the new church. More images and architects’ description after the break.