Coop Himmelblau St. Luthers Chuch

Steel whirlpools spiral into skylights in the roof of a church in Austria by architects Coop Himmelb(l)au.

The swirling roof, which was manufactured in a shipyard, rests like a table-top upon four steel columns over the prayer room of the Martin Luther Church.

Daylight penetrates the room’s stucco-covered ceiling through the circular voids, as well as through a street-facing facade of projecting glass triangles.

Through glass doors at the rear of the prayer room is a church hall used by the local community, while a sacristy, pastor’s office and toilets are situated alongside both spaces.

A 20 metre-high steel bell-tower soars up into the sky in front of the building’s entrance.

Other buildings by Austrian architects Coop Himmelb(l)au include a tower covered in a folded metal skin and an energy-generating canopy over a passageway – see all our stories about Coop Himmelb(l)au.

Photography is by Duccio Malagamba.
Here’s a more detailed description from Coop Himmelb(l)au:

Project
Martin Luther Church Hainburg, Austria
(2008-2011)

Click above for larger image
Architectural Concept
In less than a year a protestant church together with a sanctuary, a church hall and supplementary spaces was built in the centre of the Lower Austrian town Hainburg, at the site of a predecessor church that doesn’t exist anymore since the 17th century.
The shape of the building is derived from that of a huge “table”, with its entire roof construction resting on the legs of the “table” – four steel columns. Another key element is the ceiling of the prayer room: its design language has been developed from the shape of the curved roof of a neighboring Romanesque ossuary – the geometry of this century-old building is translated into a form, in line with the times, via today’s digital instruments.
The play with light and transparency has a special place in this project. The light comes from above: three large winding openings in the roof guide it into the interior. The correlation of the number Three to the concept of Trinity in the Christian theology can be interpreted as a “deliberate coincidence”.

The church interior itself is not only a place of mysticism and quietude – as an antithesis of our rather fast and media-dominated times – but also an open space for the community.
The sanctuary gives access to the glass-covered children’s corner, illuminated by daylight, which accomodates also the baptistery. The actual community hall is situated behind it: folding doors on the entire length of the space between the two main chambers allow for combining them to one continuous spatial sequence. A folded glass façade on the opposite side opens the space towards the street.
A third building element, a longitudinal slab building along a small side alley, flanks both main spaces and comprises the sacristy, the pastor’s office, a small kitchen and other ancillary rooms. A handicapped accessible ramp between the three building components accesses the church garden on higher ground.
The sculptural bell tower at the forecourt constitutes the fourth element of the building ensemble.
Like other projects of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU the roof elements of the church building were assembled in a shipyard. The implementation of the intricate geometries required specific technologies of metal-processing and manufacturing only available in shipbuilding industry. The reference to shipbuilding is at the same time also reminiscent of Le Corbusier who served as an important role model, not least because of his La Tourette monastery.

Technical Description
Due to its shape with three skylights the roof of the Martin Luther Church in Hainburg was designed as a self-supporting steel construction with a stucco ceiling. The structure was assembled in a wharf at the Baltic Sea. The exterior skin is made of 8 mm thick three-dimensionally curved steel plates welded on a frame construction. In turn, this structure of steel plates and frame sits on a girder grid. The compound of grid, frame and steel skin transfers the total load of the roof (23 tons) on four steel columns which are based on the solid concrete walls of the prayer room.
The roof construction was delivered in four separate parts to Hainburg, assembled and welded on site. There, the coating of the whole structure was finished and mounted with a crane in the designated position on the shell construction of the prayer room.
On the interior ceiling the suspended frame structure was covered in several layers of steel fabric and rush matting as carrier layer for the cladding of the stucco ceiling, whose geometry follows the three-dimensionally curved shape of the roof with the skylights.
The free-form bell tower of the Martin Luther Church was also manufactured, by means of shipbuilding technology, as a vertical self-supporting steel structure with wall thickness between 8 and 16 millimeter, only braced by horizontal frames. The 20 meter high tower weighing 8 tons is welded rigidly to a steel element encased in the concrete foundations.

OostCampus / Carlos Arroyo

In 1977 four municipalities were grouped, Oostkamp, Hertsberge, Waardamme and Ruddervoorde, as a result of a national law that eliminated more than 300 municipalities across Belgium. They regrouped services, but the resulting facilities were scattered in various municipal buildings.

In 2006, the City acquired a 4 hectares plot of land with Coca-Cola facilities built in 1992, which had become obsolete. The plot, located 5 minutes walk from the centre of Oostkamp, 10 minutes by bike from the other nuclei, and near the exit of Highway E-40, offered the opportunity to regroup municipal services, optimizing synergies and building a common image.

In 2008 the Flemish Government Architecture Agency (Vlaams Bouwmeester) announced an international competition for ideas to build OostCampus, with a slogan that paraphrases Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas … een Administratief centrum”.

The winning project, by the Madrid studio lead by Carlos Arroyo, opted for a radical re-use of the large industrial existing building, including foundations, floors, supporting structures, outer skin, insulation, waterproofing, and all recoverable services and equipment: power station, heating plant, water pipes, fire hoses, sewerage, and even parking area, fencing and access.

The reuse of the existing is a basic criterion of sustainability. The “gray energy” (energy used for the production of something) is often discarded or simply ignored. If we demolish an existing structure and build again, we will use more energy and resources than the most efficient of buildings can of save in its life span.

To transform the vast industrial hall – with minimal footprint but maximum spatial result – Arroyo designs a sheltered interior public space, wrapped in a “luminous landscape of white clouds”. Thin shells of GRG (gypsum and fibre) span the large space like huge soap bubbles. They are only 7 mm thick.

Within this landscape, a set of modular clusters provides the administrative services and spaces, designed to facilitate the relationship between citizens and administration. Citizen participation in the process is one of the key issues. Also transparency: the chamber hall is in full sight in the middle of public space, the information is accessible, you can even you visualize the municipal website … and physically enter it and talk to the person who is behind!

The materials are simple and inexpensive, but are selected and used in such a way that we want to go and touch them. Some elements are finished with a felt made from recycled bottles (PET); simple boards are CNC carved to become sophisticated 3D damascene; the floor is the existing industrial warehouse poli-concrete, with its lines of storage, on which the new signage is superimposed. The acoustics are carefully worked out, and so is the smell!

Thermal comfort is achieved with minimum effort, thanks to the technique of the “thermal onion” which optimizes climate areas according to levels of access, and making use of the thermal inertia of the concrete slab.

The price per square meter building is one-third of the usual for comparable buildings.

OostCampus opened on June 15, 2012. Implementation of sustainability criteria with spectacular results has led to criticism to define the work of Carlos Arroyo as “lush sustainability.”
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