The church is situated on the top of a small
crest with large pine trees and some exposed rock.
Geometrically speaking the church is an addition
to the existing ground, no blasting and excavation was necessary
except carefully removing the thin layer of soil. This technique,
among other things, makes it easier to preserve the existing vegetation
and topography, thereby adding a dimension to the experience of
the building.
A number of trees are preserved in atriums within
the enclosure. Some of the rock formations emerge like islands
in the concrete floor of the church, between the congregation
and choir. Thus the church takes its major divisions from elements
already on the site. This is possible because there are relatively
large tolerances in dimensioning the rooms. No module has been
used to determine the exact positions of the gardens. Rather the
materials and structures are chosen so that a gradual non incremental
adjustment of dimensions, without steps or modules, is possible.
The tension between the wish to create a "silent"
self-referring room, and a variety of obstacles limiting this
possibility, has been deliberately chosen as a strategy to architecturally
"disturb" a process in which a wide range of people
and interests are involved, and which otherwise would be heavily
loaded with conventional and other historical references.
The main structure is a steel framework with a
stone wall carrying the roof. A glass facade 90 - 160 cm off the
stone wall defines a narrow gallery around the church room. The
stone in this wall is built without mortar, thus letting light
through, and has one even side, and one uneven as standard. The
uneven outside of the internal stone wall is exposed to the outside
through the glass facade on three sides of the church. The stonewall
is stiffened horizontally by steel plates, 4mm x 250mm, that spans
between the columns, inserted into the wall every meter. These
plates can stiffen this wall only when the weight of the wall
itself is added to this structure. The glass facades are stiffened
with "propels" made from steel plates that are inserted
into the vertical joints between the glass panes, and to the horizontal
steel plates in the stonewall.
The budget was very tight, and the price per square
meter equals that of social housing in Oslo. To get this building
realized we had to use every possibility we could think of to
get more out of less, economically speaking. This was achieved
mainly by avoiding conventional "proprietary" systems
for facades, structures, walls, floors etc. Rather we used very
basic methods and techniques and surprisingly found out, again
and again, that not only was it cheaper, it also gave us a far
greater architectural freedom.
The fragmented and complex character that emerged
and concluded the process of searching for the possible configurations
- that is the layout that eventually could be realized given the
limitations we had - turned out to be so complex that it is virtually
impossible to photograph the whole building, or interior in one
shot.
