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Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Mechernich Germany Peter Zumthor

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Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany Architect Peter Zumthor Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli

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Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany Architect Peter Zumthor Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli

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In September 2004 when Peter Zumthor, the Swiss architect, presented the inaugural international lecture of the Australian Architecture Association, to a packed house in the Melbourne Town Hall, he described a small project, then still in design. It was for a tiny chapel on private farmland at Mechernich, a village about 50 kilometres southwest of Cologne, in southern Germany. He talked of how in 1998 hed been approached by a farmer and his wife, Herman-Josef and Trudel Scheidtweiler, who wanted to build a shrine in one of their elds in honour of Bruder Klaus, a 15th century hermit. They wanted to erect the chapel, they had said, in thanks for a good and happy life. The audience sat spellbound as Zumthor described how the chapel was going to be built: of rst erecting a tepee of logs, encasing it in concrete and setting it alight from inside, to smoulder slowly until the logs were burnt away, much the same way charcoal used to be made, leaving behind a charred shell, lit only by an opening from above. From memory, he showed a beautifully rendered pencil drawing. Bruder Klaus (1417-87) was a farmer himself, but for the last 20 years of his life he lived as hermit at Fleli-Ranft, about 70kms northeast of Lucerne, Switzerland, surviving, according to legend, on a diet of the Holy Eucharist alone. As a teenager he is said to have had visions of inhabiting a tower in the service of God; he also spoke of a vision, while still inside his mothers womb, of seeing a star that lit up the world. In 1469, local civic authorities built him a simple monastic cell and chapel it is still there where he meditated and dispensed advice to the most powerful politicians of the day. He was declared a saint in 1947. It happens that Bruder Klaus is also the patron saint of Switzerland and a favorite of Zumthors mother. Zumthor took on the job, free apparently, as a gift to his mother. The chapel is now done, and it stands as a sentinel rmly rooted in the landscape on the edge of a eld on the Scheidtweiler farm. Since its inauguration in May it has attracted as many architectural pilgrims ocking to see this new work from the hand of the Swiss perfectionist as locals coming to pay their respects to the memory of a hermit monk. In its irregular ve-sided form, rising starkly above the surrounding landscape, there are virtually no clues to what lies within. It appears impenetrable, has no windows and it could be, for all youd know, a modern take on the idea of a medieval lookout tower. A narrow gravel path leads from the road directly to its massive, triangular steel door; the only giveaway that this might be a place of pilgrimage: a spindly bronze cross embedded in the banded concrete surface above the doorway.

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Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany Architect Peter Zumthor Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli

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Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany Architect Peter Zumthor Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli

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But the chapels simple form is far richer in its signicance and more complex in its making than rst appears. The tower rises 12 metres in 24 layers of what Zumthor describes as rammed concrete made from white cement, river gravel and reddish-yellow sand the slop mixed together and pushed by hand into wood shutters by farmer Scheidtweiler working with neighbouring farmers, friends and acquaintances. But before that, the interior of the chapel had to be shaped. For that, 112 slender tree trunks, cut from trees felled in a nearby forest, were arranged in the shape of a tepee over a concrete platform. The outer body of the chapel was then constructed in 50cm layers of concrete, each layer poured one per day for 24 days between the end of October 2005 and September 2006; each band representing an hour of the day. The tree trunks were later set alight and left to smoulder for three weeks, until they fell away, leaving behind a black-brown, charred concrete shell, its walls scalloped by the timbers that once supported them. A local art founder added a oor of poured lead over a concrete base, melting four tons of recycled tin-lead alloyed with antimony in batches in a crucible and ladling it onto the oor by hand. The attraction of the tower alone standing in its rural landscape would be compelling enough. But step inside, with the three metre tall steel door shut close, and the visitor enters an aweinspiring spiritual world. The walls lean in and all sense of light vanishes, momentarily, and it feels as if the visitor has been plunged into a dark underground world until, a few paces along, the tiny chapel, barely large enough for two or three people at a time, bursts into view, lit from above by an open, tear-shaped oculus. The light is intense, aring from above directly on to the molten lead oor; cascading down and illuminating the channels left over by the burnt-out tree trunks. Three hundred and fty holes punched into the concrete shell by the shuttering ties are lled with plugs of mouth-blown glass; the light passing through them, dancing and sparkling out of the blackened walls. The space is tiny and offers no obvious sense of comfort. A meditation wheel cast in bronze, similar to the meditation wheel of Bruder Klaus, stuck into the concrete wall overhead; a bronze bust of Bruder Klaus on a slender pillar, by Swiss sculptor Hans Josephsohn; a bench crafted from a single piece of linden wood; steel candle holders; these are the simple objects that ll the chapel. It is, after all, a place for meditation, solace and reection. Is this Zumthors interpretation of the monks vision inside the womb? So, here is a small building rmly rooted in the landscape, open to rain from above, rising above a farmers eld, made from local materials hand mixed concrete, wood and lead put together by local labour. Yet it is compelling, almost perfect in its obsessive simplicity. It is masterful. JR

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Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany Architect Peter Zumthor Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli

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Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany Architect Peter Zumthor Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli

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The tree trunksset alight and left to smoulder for three weeks, until they fell away, leaving behind a black-brown, charred concrete shell, its walls scalloped by the timbers that once supported them. Project Statement Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel This eld chapel is dedicated to Nikolaus von Flue, 1717-1487, Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany farmer, mystic and peacemaker, who lived as a hermit in Flueli Architect Peter Zumthor Ranft, a mountain valley nearby. The interior of the chapel is Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, shaped by 112 tree trunks. The trees were felled in the town forest Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. of Bad Mnstereifel. Under the direction of master carpenter Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Markus Remann, helpers stacked the trunks on a concrete slab Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli in the eld to form a tepee-like construction. The body of the chapel was erected around the wooden tepee in 50-cm-thick layers of rammed concrete, consisting of river gravel, reddish yellow sand from the Rhiem pit in Erp and white cement. The layers were poured one per day for 24 days between the end of October 2005 and September 2006. Friends and acquaintances of the Scheidtweiler family, forming so-called ramming teams for each of the 24 days, worked under the guidance of master builder Alexander Mahlberg and foreman Hans Joachim Engler. In the fall of 2006, a smouldering re was maintained for three weeks inside the wooden tepee, now clad entirely in concrete. The re dried out the tree trunks, causing some of them to come loose. All of the wood was then removed mechanically. After a concrete oor with a specied gradient had been poured, Miroslav Stransky and his wife Dagmar, who run a ne art foundry, added a oor of poured lead about 2 cm thick. On site, they slowly melted four tons of recycled tin-lead alloyed with antimony in a crucible and ladled it onto the oor by hand. The metalwork, the main door, the sand containers for the candles and the sacred vessels were made by master locksmith Willi Mller and by Michael Hamacher, Markus Remann made the bench out of one solid piece of linden wood and Miroslav Stransky cast the diagram for meditation in bronze after the meditation wheel of Brother Klaus. The 350 holes left in the concrete by the shuttering ties are lled with crystal plugs of mouth-blown glass from the Eisch Glassworks in Frauenau. Swiss artist Hans Josephsohn sculpted the half gure in bronze of Bruder Klaus. Peter Zumthor

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Three hundred and fty holes punched into the shell by the shuttering ties are lled with plugs of mouth-blown glass; the light passing through them, dancing and sparkling

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Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany Architect Peter Zumthor Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli

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Project Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Location Mechernich-Wachendorf, Germany Architect Peter Zumthor Project Team Rainer Weitschies, Michael Hemmi, Frank Furrer, Pavlina Lucas, Rosa Goncalves. Structural Engineers Jurg Buchli, Claus Jung Photographers Walter Mair, Pietro Savorelli