Transcending The Everyday - Catholic Academy, Bishops' Synod in Berlin, one building

Architectural Review, The, May, 2001 by Steven Spier

A mixed-use building, the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Germany, encompasses both sacred and profane functions and locks into the fabric of the city with imagination and grace.

The benefits mixed-use buildings bring to the life of a city have been rediscovered and embraced. Traditionally defined by dual functions such as living and working, or shops and offices, it is now taken for granted that other building types -- such as museums, for instance -- should contain all sorts of programmes. Mixed use may have a more developed history on the continent of Europe, but the new Catholic Academy and Bishops' Synod in Berlin pushes it to heady extremes. A chapel and underground parking, a cemetery and a guesthouse, the programme ranges from the spiritual to the mundane.

The competition brief for this project in former East Berlin was to expand significantly the existing Catholic Academy and to add to it the headquarters for the Catholic Church in Germany (then situated in Bonn). These two institutions, though, have very different characters. The Academy is public and a place to meet, with a restaurant, 350-seat auditorium, seminar rooms, guesthouse with eight apartments and 40 rooms, office space, and underground parking. By contrast, the headquarters buildings are private and privileged. They function as an embassy, chancery and a residence for the Archbishop and must accommodate German Catholic bishops during regular conferences and debates.

The strategy for incorporating these two distinct kinds of programme is more complex, however, than simple duality. The architects chose to articulate the different programmatic elements as distinct buildings, each with its own palette of materials. What helps unite this potentially cacophonous assemblage is use of the typologies of the monastery and the Berlin courtyard block. Reference to the former can be seen in some of the formal language, such as the colonnade in front of the church, and in the landscaping and character of the external spaces. Typically, the Berlin courtyard was not a single, elegant space, but rather a series of semi-public voids that reached deep into the block. Its development was a pragmatic response to the size of the nineteenth-century urban grid. By drawing on both these traditions, one composed, the other grittier, the architects have come up with something new.

The resulting five outdoor spaces each have their own character and offer varying degrees of privacy. The first courtyard, which slopes down to the street to meet you, functions the most like a traditional square. It is generously scaled, harmonious and provides access to all the complex's components. The other courtyards are part of a network of secondary spaces which includes foyers, paths and even views. These not only join the buildings, but also allow for shifting hierarchies and changing types of occupation. For instance, the processional route of the ambulatory, along which the cross is carried into the church, also acts as a shortcut from the restaurant to the foyer of the auditorium, which is also the lobby for the guesthouse.

The facades on this main square are an accomplished play of solid and void, horizontal and vertical. Tucked in behind them are the Academy's church and the Synod's chapel, the two transcendental pieces of the assembly. Their differing characters as places of worship reflect their place in the complex. The church is open to the general public and sits discretely on the main courtyard behind a concrete colonnade. It pushes itself upward from within a glass ambulatory linking the restaurant in the existing building to the guesthouse, entrance courtyard, small garden and cemetery (in which Hegel, Schinkel and Brecht are buried). Its simple volume is defined by stone bearing walls built up in layers of rough hewn yellow-grey granite from Santiago de Compostela that seem neither monolithic nor massive because of the thinness, striation and texture of the blocks. The walls slip by a plain white ceiling held on four slim concrete legs. A metaphor for the sky, this modern baldacchino also frees them from any technica l requirements except supporting themselves.

The church's construction and materials are elemental. They are used, however, in such a way as to transform those qualities into the very mysteries of the Church. Interspersed with the stones of the walls are cast glass slabs laid with increasing frequency as the wall rises. If stone is the earth itself, then sand is even more primordial and when transformed into glass becomes its opposite. The wall changes from opaque to translucent, from textured to smooth, from grey to blue-green, dematerializing as it rises to heaven. This is most dramatic from the exterior at night when the wall dissolves skyward. The altar is made of the same stone slabs but more roughly hewn; the tabernacle is carved into the end wall; apostle lights project out of the walls on slabs. These elements are integral with the building fabric, but others are portable: the lectern is wrought iron, the cross is timber and can be carried in processions. The 60 wooden seats are fixed, but stools can be freely positioned according to the event. Materials are basic and allowed to function in the most fundamental and profound sense.