Modern Salvation

A religious twist on a design classic helps us to see the light in a church in East Bohemia.

If you’ve poked your head into a church lately, you may have noticed a few changes. Gone, increasingly, are the solemn sermons and reverent hymns, and in their place shaggy-haired youths in jeans and jandals strike up rock rhythms on bass guitars, as preachers spice up their sermons with audio-visual presentations and contemporary culture references. Yes, yes, we know it’s the church trying to ‘move with the times’ – as it needs to – but we can’t help but wish that the modernisation could be done in a way that’s a little less, well, flashy. And noisy.

That’s why we love this makeover of St Bartholomew’s Church in the village of Chodovice in the Czech Republic. Under the Qubus Studion banner, designers Maxim Velcovsky and Jakub Berdych have given the ancient church a modern redesign by replacing the traditional pews with customised design classic chairs, and adding appropriately Bohemian touches with dripping chandeliers and Persian carpets.

The central nave of the church has been stripped of layers of dull repaints, and left exposed so that visitors can appreciate the course of history through the fragments and details revealed on the brickwork. Against the extreme simplicity of the army of Verner Panton chairs and white Eames Chairs on Eiffel Tower bases, the beauty of the old architecture takes centre stage.
To the Panton chairs, the designers added two crucial details – plush red cushions to increase the comfort of long services, and to use as kneelers, and – even though they knew this would cause them to lose the warranty from the manufacturer Vitra – Christian crosses carved through the back of every chair.

The soaring space is illuminated by a series of pressed, rough-cut crystal chandeliers, and given a sense of warmth and intimacy by dozens of Persian carpets, a feature more commonly found in Muslim shrines than Christian churches. The cross-denominational reference was intentional, say the designers: “This space is an eclectic cocktail and a place to ponder, moving us towards cultural dialogue.”

And although there’s little fear of falling asleep during Mass in a space as gorgeous as this, we hope the congregation is younger than the chair design – all that standing and kneeling might prove a bit tricky without solid pews to give yourself a hand up on. Still, we feel safe in prophesying a massive run of bookings for wedding ceremonies here. MW