Nov 05

Worth Abbey by Heatherwick Studio

Posted in: Monasteries, walnut, worship

Worth Abbey by Heatherwick Studio

London designer Thomas Heatherwick has embedded curved threads of ash into dark walnut pews for an abbey in England’s South Downs.

Worth Abbey by Heatherwick Studio

Located beneath the vaulted dome of Worth Abbey, the wooden benches fan around a stone altar to provide more than enough seating for the 700-strong congregation.

Worth Abbey by Heatherwick Studio

The new furniture also includes choir stalls, monastery seats, desks and confession rooms, all of which were fabricated from the solid hardwood.

Worth Abbey by Heatherwick Studio

Thomas Heatherwick received a lot of press last year when his UK pavilion opened in Shanghai and he redesigned London’s iconic Routemaster bus, but he’s also designed furniture including a metal chair shaped like a spinning top – see more projects by Heatherwick Studio here.

Worth Abbey by Heatherwick Studio

Photography is by Edmund Sumner.

Here’s some text about the project from the American Hardwood Export Council:

Heatherwick Brings New Life in Black Walnut to Worth Abbey

Nestled on a crest overlooking the South Downs, Worth Abbey Church has a striking aspect. Its remarkable conical sloping roof sets off the extensive, peaceful grounds and the rolling landscape below. The 25 English Benedictine monks who reside at the Abbey run a school, a parish and a place of retreat.

The Abbey Church was designed by the architect Francis Pollen, and is considered by many to be the best example of his style. Since its opening in 1974, the Abbey’s furniture comprised freestanding chairs which impinged on the ambiance, creating a cluttered, temporary feel. The Monks decided that it was time to undertake some refurbishment work and took the opportunity to have a more cohesive, relevant and purposefully designed congregational and clergy furniture. They commissioned Heatherwick Studio to design and develop a furniture strategy as part of wider renovations to the Abbey Church. The furniture package included pew benches, choir stalls with misericord seats and desks, benches, credence tables, server seats and reconciliation (confessional) rooms.

Worth Abbey by Heatherwick Studio

Heatherwick Studio is headed by Thomas Heatherwick who trained at Manchester Polytechnic and the RCA. Since its founding in 1994, the studio has earned a reputation for coming up with artistically exciting solutions to clients’ design briefs ranging from product design to major architectural and large scale design projects. The studio consists of team with a wide range of disciplines including architecture, product design, model making, fabrication, landscape design, fine art and curation, and they are used to working in a sensitive historic context, which was vital for the refurbishment work undertaken at Worth Abbey. They also have a very strong making ethos, and a workshop within the practice allows them to make prototypes and models, giving them a very valuable ‘makers eye view’ of all the commissions they undertake.

The original auditorium space of the Abbey has a tangible spiritual feel to it; a difficult thing to achieve with modern materials without the obvious historical and religious architectural references. Natural stone and neutral colouring make the space light and airy. Heatherwick wanted to complement the materials used by Pollen and decided to use solid wood throughout for the new furniture. In a space that uses natural and neutral tones, a more traditional choice might have been oak or a more modern option could have been a pale species like maple. Heatherwick took a braver move and chose American black walnut to give a colourful aspect to the chapel, the darker heartwood creating a distinctive, defined line to the design, and the creamy sapwood adding a touch of warmth without over powering the celebrants and congregation who are the main focus of any service. According to Thomas Heatherwick, “Walnut was chosen for its darkness and subtlety and for the way that when it would be used in quantity on our project, its dusky colour would not become overbearing.”

As you enter the main nave you are struck by the presence of the furniture but it does not overwhelm the space, nor is it too small in scale. It is a big area serving congregations of 700 people, and with capacity for double that number. The design approach has kept the circular nature of the space with a stone altar in the middle. The original furniture did not have kneelers for the congregation so these were designed as an integral part of the seating.

Worth Abbey by Heatherwick Studio

Furniture fabrication was undertaken by Artezan, a specialist joinery division within Swift Horsman, a UK-based company chosen for their flexible and experienced approach to the complex method of construction. Swift were up for the challenge and have delivered it successfully. Thomas Heatherwick said he was “immensely impressed with the quality of the work of the craftsmen and the phenomenal determination and commitment of the firm to a very challenging commission.”

The way the furniture is constructed is central to the whole theme of the Heatherwick design. Having decided on solid wood and a clean lined approach, Thomas and the team at Heatherwick came up with a striking laminated design which complements the square walls of the church and the radial nature of its layout.
Due to movement issues inherent in working with all-solid wood construction, an interior metal frame allows the natural characteristics of the timber to come through and be strong enough to easily manage everyday use. This frame links the kneelers to the seating, making each pew a standalone piece. Working with the team at Swift Horsman, complex jigs were designed and developed to cope with the complicated glue-ups that were part and parcel of the design.

The most intriguing and subtle aspect is a 0.6mm line of ash which is laminated into the layers of black walnut. This adds a sense of detail that gives it an historical link to the traditions of inlay within the craft but with a very contemporary and sculptural feel. At a distance it is barely there, but the closer you get to the furniture the more apparent and thus more effective it becomes, giving a gentle element of understated surprise to the overall effect. This is the most artistic aspect of the whole concept and it runs throughout the whole collection of furniture; the central monks seat shows it most dramatically, where the angle of the laminating meets the curve of the back, creating a wave effect in the ash veneer. This helps give a central focus to the lead preacher of the day.

The overall impression is that the furniture definitely adds a cohesive feel to Pollen’s concept while allowing the practical considerations of running and attending a service to actually work. Thomas Heatherwick, his team and Swift Horsman are to be congratulated on a distinctive and extremely high quality solution both in terms of its ideas and its craftsmanship.

See also:

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St Hilaire church in Melle by Mathieu LehanneurChapel of the Assumption Interior by John DoeInfinity Chapel by hanrahanMeyers
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Sep 11

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

Posted in: Astoc, Monasteries, worship

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

German architects Astoc have completed a monastery extension in Duisberg Duisburg with walls that fold around the entrance like origami sculptures.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

Hamborn Abbey was consecrated in the twelfth century and has been altered many times in its history.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

The recent addition is faced in white plaster and creates a third edge around a private courtyard garden.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

A large triangular window projects proud of one elevation, while a glass wall at the entrance recedes into the facade.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

Tiles cover the sloping roof of the monastery and wrap around a wall at the far corner.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

The new building includes a church for choral prayers and a refectory for communal meals.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

Other buildings for worship from the Dezeen archive include a church perforated by stained glass panels and a temple in Mumbai.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

Photography is by Christa Lachenmaier.

Here are some more details from Astoc:

Extension of Hamborn Abbey, Duisburg

It may come as a surprise to find a flourishing catholic monastery in the midst of an industrial city like Duisburg. The urban district of Hamborn is, however, rather different from the ones dominated by withering heavy industry. The site of the present St. Johann Abbey in Hamborn was already settled more than a thousand years ago. The beginnings of its ecclesiastical history are marked by the donation of the Hamborn estate to the archbishop of Cologne in 1136 with the condition to build a monastery there. The small parish church, already existing on the estate since the ninth century, was subsequently converted to a monastery church. A Romanesque cloister was added to link the various buildings of the abbey with each other of which the northern wing still exists today. The monastery church was consecrated in 1170, elevating it to the status of an abbey. That title was annulled in 1806 in the course of the secularization drive. During World War Two, the buildings were largely destroyed but, as if in defiance, resettled by seven brothers in 1959. In 1994, the building complex regained the status of an abbey. In 1972, a three-storied extension was added to provide residential and office space, designed by the Cologne-based architect Hans Schilling.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

Today, twenty-five canons are part of the abbey. As the order in Hamborn keeps growing each year, another building extension was required. The client wanted the architecture’ to express one of the typical ideals of a canonical monastery, namely that of “communio ad intra et ad extra” (“community inside and community outside). ASTOC’s design follows the principles of the Premonstratensians who consciously and deliberately combine monastic community life with pastoral and missionary service, building communities both within and outside the abbey.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

The new oblong building closes the gap on the third side of a courtyard garden which was previously enclosed only on two sides. With it, a self-confident and new contemporary quality has been added to the heterogeneous buildings in the neighborhood. The new building adopts the principle of employing columns to line the corridor areas, as is the case with the medieval southern wing and the extension designed by Hans Schilling. The irregular geometry of the white-plastered new building appears folded. The folds allow the building to subtly react to the urban developmental and geometrical guidelines that are derived from the shape of the site and the connecting heights of the existing buildings surrounding it.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

The spaces inside the new building satisfy all the requirements of monastic community life which includes joint meals in the refectory and choral prayers in the monastery church, requiring places and spaces to meet and communicate, as well as those for silence and worship. The Premonstratensians combine the inner life of the monastic community with outwardly directed pastoral care. This is also evident in Hamborn: just next door is the abbey high school, the abbey center for seminars and conferences, St. John’s Hospital, and the abbey cemetery which are all imbedded in the old vicarage of St. Johann and the neighboring vicarages that are also performance venues of the canons.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

 

Apart from the residential wing, the new building provides a sacral chamber, offices and a recreation room with large doors that give onto the garden, the conversation and group spaces, terraces, and the patio. The different functions are all housed under one common roof while the spaces are organized around liturgical paths, each with their own distinct architecture: on the first floor, an historical crucifixion group visually leads on to the extension building, guiding the eye and subsequent movement in space.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

Coming from the existing buildings, the path leads from the Romanesque cloister (and from the monastery church) to the chapel at the narrow end of the oblong building. This small, vertically rising sacral space, equipped with its own gallery, faces the east, permitting morning light during the early morning prayers. In keeping with the premise of intimately linking inside and outside, the chapel can be accessed from three sides: from the inside of the monastery, from the cemetery and from the street or the neighboring school. It can also be used for funeral services, for group services with school classes or for days of retreat. As such, the entire monastery complex is positioned between two sacral spaces that are connected with each other and to the monastery by the cloisters.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

The two upper floors are more private in nature. Here, the bowers are lined along a double-story inner pergola. A golden front wall serves as optical apex of the dynamically-shaped diagonal surfaces that describe the space.

While the new building continues the neighboring building’s row of columns on the garden side, it presents a distinct and different look to the street side, with its white-plastered facades starkly contrasting the reddish brown brick of the neighboring building. The new building has a flat pent roof and is dipped in a warm antique white hue both on the inside and the outside, bringing to mind the color of the Premonstratensian order’s robes. The white surfaces are complemented by oak doors and floors, coated concrete, and the metal and glass facade of the entrance side.

Hamborn Abbey Extension by Astoc

The extension building is brightly lit, being suffused by light, understood as symbol of “the Premonstratensians’ commitment to the testimonial of life”, as Abbot Albert puts it. In all their actions, they strive to affirm life which the resurrected Christ contrasts with the darkness of death.

See also:

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Reading between the Lines
by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh		Martin Luther Church
by Coop Himmelb(l)au		Chapel of St. Lawrence
by Avanto Architects
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