Detail of the project ed. 2020

BAY­ER UHRIG + MOD­ER­SOHN & FREIESLEBEN – EVAN­GEL­I­CAL CHURCH OF CHRIST

Design­er Dirk Bay­er
Loca­tion Hei­de­bruch­straße 29, Bruch­hof-Sand­­dorf, 66424 Homburg/Saar, Saarland
Design Team

ARGE
baye und uhrig Architek­ten PartGmbB
Beethoven­straße 54–56
67655 Kaiserslautern
+
Mod­er­sohn & Freiesleben
Bay­er­nallee 47
14052 Berlin

Year 2015
Pho­to credits

Michael Hein­rich 503B036DR, 503B035D, 503B031D
Sven Paus­t­ian HOM88381, HOM5474, HOM5614.jpg HOM5614
Bern­hard Friese BUKL12HP4_041
Architek­ten IMG_3753, P1060132‑1, P1020483

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

For a long time, the Protes­tant parish of the Hom­burg dis­trict of Bruch­hof-Sand­­dorf was faced with the same chal­lenge as many oth­ers in Ger­many: too much build­ing fab­ric, exces­sive main­te­nance and oper­at­ing costs. In addi­tion to the Chris­tuskirche dat­ing from 1928, there was also a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre from the 1970s, but the funds were no longer suf­fi­cient to main­tain both build­ings. Because of this prob­lem, Pas­tor Petra Schei­d­hauer con­tact­ed the archi­tec­ture firm Bay­er Uhrig from Kaiser­slautern in 2009. The con­cept for the con­ver­sion is as sim­ple as it is obvi­ous: the litur­gi­cal room is reduced in size and rotat­ed by 90 degrees, the exist­ing gallery is extend­ed by a sec­ond one and an old entrance is reopened. In order to install the “house with­in a house” in the octag­o­nal church room, the altar and pews first had to be removed, the floor for the under­floor heat­ing dug out, and the old walls insu­lat­ed from the inside. The new­ly insert­ed con­struc­tion con­sists of sim­ple wood­en stud walls and wood­en beam ceil­ings. A white waxed plank form­work, some­times planed and some­times left rough sawn, cov­ers para­pets, walls and ceil­ings. The three dif­fer­ent widths of the larch boards addi­tion­al­ly enliv­en the sur­faces and bind them togeth­er, cre­at­ing the light impres­sion of a tent. The cov­ers of the gal­leries and para­pets are stained dark.The litur­gi­cal room, which is now ori­ent­ed trans­verse­ly to the entrance, divides two areas: the vestibule with the main entrance and toi­let, and the parish room, which is locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly where the altar used to stand. Thanks to a reopened side entrance, this room can be used sep­a­rate­ly for parish meet­ings, cours­es or con­fir­ma­tion class­es, but also as a kitchen.
Although the bud­get for the ren­o­va­tion was tight at around 300,000 euros, the new premis­es appear dig­ni­fied and cheer­ful. Bay­er Uhrig Archi­tects, who car­ried out the plan­ning in a joint ven­ture with the Berlin firm Mod­er­sohn & Freiesleben, con­cen­trat­ed on a mix­ture of sim­ple, clean details, mod­est mate­ri­als and spe­cial indi­vid­ual ingre­di­ents, which can exist along­side the “aurat­ic” ele­ments of the old church inven­to­ry such as the bap­tismal font and hymn tablet. An exam­ple: with the “rota­tion” of the litur­gi­cal space, the two side win­dows became more promi­nent and there­fore required spe­cial cre­ative attention.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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