Influenced by Le Corbusier, Kurt Schwitters and Gothic architecture, Walter Maria Förderer designed some of Europe’s most avant-garde religious buildings
In the 1960s, Walter Maria Förderer designed eight churches in Switzerland and Germany. Influenced by
, and even more so by the collages of Kurt Schwitters and Gothic architecture, Förderer designed cascades of concrete blocks and strange totemic objects that now form some of Europe’s most avant-garde religious buildings.this creation by Förderer in Hérémence, Switzerland, defines the architect’s unique approach, in which he replicates the rugged exterior on the inside and strategically places windows to create a chiaroscuro effect on bare concrete surfaces.
Walter Maria Förderer, born in 1928, was at the forefront of the generation of Swiss architects to practise in the late 1940s and 1950s. He began his career as a sculptor, and his use of concrete evolved from his preference for the hands-on contact with a material.
’s later works emphasised the combination of organic forms with rigid concrete abstraction, Förderer and his partners eschewed flowing space for a three-dimensional grid, layering functions on top of one another and reflecting the jumble with stacked concrete cubes.the bell tower of this church in Chur appears highly symbolic, with two interlocking elements and a cross held aloft from the church’s facade.
Nowhere is this more evident than in his eight churches completed during the 1960s in Switzerland and Germany. The church centre at Hérémence, a small Swiss town nestled on a steeply sloping site, includes the church of St Nicholas, plus meeting rooms and accommodation.
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