Detail of the project ed. 2020

ROBERT GUTOWS­KI — SAINT JOHN PAUL II CHURCH

Design­er	Robert Gutows­ki
Loca­tion	Munkás tér 1., H‑2071 Páty, Hungary
Design Team	Robert Gutows­ki Ákos Boczkó, Gáspár Bol­lók, Barn­abás Dely-Steindl, Hunor Lás­zló Kovács, István Kövér, Atti­la Révai, Béla Ákos Szokolay
Year	2019
Pho­to credits	Bujnovszky Tamás

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Church of Pope John Paul II, Páty
Our office was award­ed the ten­der to design the church in Páty, in a restrict­ed design con­test in 2004. The entire design and con­struc­tion process was car­ried out with the organ­i­sa­tion and involve­ment of the local com­mu­ni­ty. The build­ing was erect­ed main­ly with the help of dona­tions and was con­se­crat­ed in 2019.
The Church of Pope John Paul II rep­re­sents a con­scious response to litur­gi­cal changes in recent decades, ren­der­ing it a mod­el church exper­i­ment in con­tem­po­rary church archi­tec­ture. Empha­sis is shift­ed toward the active involve­ment of wor­ship­pers. The com­mu­ni­ty is not a pas­sive observ­er of events in a sanc­tu­ary, but rather active­ly expe­ri­ences the holy act.
The Church clear­ly defines its pur­pose: while the Cre­ator and the almighty God are at the cen­tre of tra­di­tion­al litur­gy, mod­ern litur­gi­cal efforts have shift­ed empha­sis to the recre­ator God, the image of a per­pet­u­al­ly redeem­ing Christ. As Saint Augus­tine said, “the Church is cre­at­ed through the Eucharist”, and so is the belief in Christ, the cel­e­bra­tion of the Eucharist today at the cen­tre of com­mu­nal experience.
This is the source of cen­tral spa­tial design. In our design the nave func­tions as the church yard, while the litur­gi­cal space resem­bles the sanc­tu­ary of the Baroque church end­ing with the apse. The tra­di­tions of his­tor­i­cal church archi­tec­ture are expressed in a nov­el form: the bro­ken angle of the yard and church inte­ri­or, i.e. of the axes of the nave and the sanc­tu­ary, is a Medieval sym­bol, a metaphor of the bro­ken body.
With­in the church inte­ri­or, the empha­sis of sacral func­tions is pro­vid­ed by sur­faces illu­mi­nat­ed by spot and dif­fused light with­in the rein­forced con­crete cupo­la. The prox­im­i­ty of the altar, nat­ur­al light direct­ed at the cen­tre, and an inti­mate atmos­phere, inspire an appro­pri­ate ambiance and reflection.
The green stone block at the altar is the focal point of the space. When sanc­ti­fy­ing the church, the rel­ic of the blood of Pope John Paul II was placed at the bot­tom of the altar stone. The recess of the reli­quary is closed with white carved Car­rara mar­ble, bear­ing the coat of arms of the Pope. The floor plan of the altar adja­cent to the floor is rec­tan­gu­lar, adapt­ed to the pan­el lay­out of the floor, con­nect­ing to the earth­ly world. The con­tour of the stone changes and widens upward, and its cor­ners are round­ed off to allow gath­er­ing around the altar.
The litur­gi­cal space is sur­round­ed by com­mu­nal and edu­ca­tion­al rooms, an event hall, guest room, the priest’s liv­ing quar­ters, offices and ser­vice rooms, form­ing a uni­fied whole togeth­er with the yard. The ellip­ti­cal lay­out of the church in the small-town, het­ero­ge­neous envi­ron­ment sym­bol­is­es perpetuity.

Cus­tomer: Székesfe­hérvár Dio­cese, Antal Spányi diocesan
Design: Robert Gutows­ki Architects
Restrict­ed design con­test: 2004
Design: 2004–2007
Imple­men­ta­tion: 2007–2019
Offi­cial com­ple­tion of the con­struc­tion: 2017
Con­se­cra­tion of church: 28 April 2019

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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