Detail of the project ed. 2020

REIT­MAYR ARCHITEK­TEN – ST PETERS CHURCH

Design­er	Peter Reit­mayr
Loca­tion	Haupt­straße 1, 8813 St. Lambrecht
Design Team	reit­mayr architekten Architekt DI Peter Reitmayr Architekt DI Ursu­la Markut DI Melanie Rudler
Year	2017
Pho­to credits	Paul Ott, Schörgel­gasse 48, 8010 Graz office@pau-ott.at www.paul-ott.at

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

St Peter’s Church St. Lambrecht

St Peter’s Church was built from 1424 onwards as a hos­pi­tal and parish church and con­vert­ed to the baroque style at the end of the 17th cen­tu­ry. After being decon­se­crat­ed by decree of Joseph II in 1786, it was long used for oth­er pur­pos­es. Not until 1897/1898 was it recre­at­ed under his­tori­cism, mak­ing use of old Goth­ic inventory.

The sin­gle three-bay nave and side aisles are bound­ed to the east by a nar­rowed choir with one bay and five-eighths ter­mi­na­tion. The dec­o­ra­tive vault paint­ings prob­a­bly date back to the time of build­ing and may have been renewed after the fire of 1471. The stained glass was done in 1898. The murals on the west­ern and north­ern walls were cre­at­ed in the style of the Nazarene move­ment by Felix Barazut­ti in 1906 and 1916 respec­tive­ly. Instead of a medieval wood­en matroneum, a brick-built gallery was installed around 1680 but was demol­ished in the course of ren­o­va­tion in 1969.

The col­le­gial body had long been plan­ning the con­ver­sion St Peter’s com­bined with par­tial ren­o­va­tion. Pre­lim­i­nary analy­ses and the ini­tial steps of plan­ning began in 2015. The aim was to fur­nish the atmos­pher­ic inte­ri­or of the church so that it could be used as a week­day church and also for events bet­ter held in an inti­mate set­ting than in the expan­sive col­le­giate church.

On the one hand, con­ver­sion work was intend­ed to restore the beau­ty of the Goth­ic build­ing with its grad­u­a­tion in height, colour­ing and light­ing and, on the oth­er, to cre­ate a con­tem­po­rary atmos­phere for cel­e­brat­ing eccle­si­as­ti­cal fes­tiv­i­ties in this set­ting. Because restora­tion of the murals and stonework inside the church exceed­ed avail­able funds, it was decid­ed to clean the sur­faces and car­ry out only minor colour retouch­ing in keep­ing with accept­ed con­ser­va­tion practice.

Over the cen­turies, the lev­el of the church floor had risen by half a metre, detract­ing from the over­all height of the inte­ri­or and caus­ing the bases of the stonework to van­ish. The orig­i­nal church floor that still exists in parts—a grey­ish brown lime floor—was uncov­ered. Coor­di­nat­ing with the Fed­er­al Mon­u­ments Office, a rough­ly 14 cm thick new floor was installed on top con­sist­ing of vac­u­um insu­la­tion, rein­forced heat­ed screed, and poured floor­ing whose colour and tex­ture are sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal lime floor. By decreas­ing the height of the floor it was also pos­si­ble to make the main entrance on the north side barrier-free.

The chan­cel was moved into the nave. Now, at the cen­tre, is the new altar of red Adnet mar­ble. The cylin­dri­cal form and mate­r­i­al are spe­cial ref­er­ences to the his­to­ry of St Peter’s. In addi­tion to the altar and ambo, the aim was also to cre­ate a matroneum, a por­ti­co with stairs, church door and entry­way as well as the entire fur­nish­ings and light­ing. The for­mal idiom of the por­ti­co and matroneum was devel­oped on the basis of themes from ship­build­ing that are entrenched in col­lec­tive archi­tec­tur­al mem­o­ry as arche­typ­i­cal ele­ments of mod­ern archi­tec­ture. Inci­den­tal­ly, this metaphor has always been linked in the his­to­ry of eccle­si­as­ti­cal archi­tec­ture with St Peter the “fish­er of men”. How­ev­er, aside from all of the pos­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tions, we hope that peo­ple will be able to per­ceive the con­tin­ued use and revival of this for­mal idiom as both a dis­crete from of archi­tec­ture and as a con­tex­tu­al act of build­ing in the ongo­ing his­to­ry of St Peter’s.

The use of wood, a mate­r­i­al that defines almost all new archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments, also harks back to the his­tor­i­cal fab­ric of the build­ing, for exam­ple the orig­i­nal matroneum, as well as to the fact that wood has ever been a key ele­ment of mod­ern church design. The sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­ni­cal and aes­thet­ic form of use makes ref­er­ence to a cur­rent archi­tec­tur­al dis­course, while at the same time fol­low­ing in a long tra­di­tion of build­ing ele­ments in church architecture.

Inside the new por­ti­co, a light stair­way runs up to the matroneum. This is where the his­tor­i­cal stairs would have been locat­ed out­side the church, with a num­ber of traces still vis­i­ble on the façade. The fold­ed shell of the por­ti­co was built from cross­lam on pre­fab foun­da­tions. The ven­ti­lat­ed façade is lined on the out­side with the same larch shin­gles found on the church roof. Like the por­ti­co, the new matroneum is a tim­ber struc­ture. It was erect­ed on round tim­ber posts in buck­et foun­da­tions. All vis­i­ble wood sur­faces are untreat­ed, knot­less fir. In addi­tion, only rift and half-rift boards were used for face­work. The untreat­ed wood is an attempt, in the seman­tic field of the church, to cre­ate a form of mate­r­i­al truth that has large­ly van­ished from our every­day world. The sand­ed, but oth­er­wise untreat­ed build­ing mate­r­i­al may remind us that there still exists a per­cep­tion beyond all per­fect, main­te­­nance-free and, ulti­mate­ly, arbi­trary surfaces.

Peter Reit­mayr

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

BACK TO PROJECTS PAGE