Mathieu Lehanneur has converted the choir at St Hilaire church in Melle in the Deux-Sèvres department in France, creating a topographic, geological feeling. To reinforce that the church was built there, the Romanesque building has been infused with a mineral feeling and look with white marble.
What I like best about this design is that it feels like it grew organically from the floor, spilling over and forming around the church’s stone columns, like a natural landscape.
Photos by Felipe Ribon.
Daniel on 05.28.2011 at 04:56 AM
That’s amazing. From someone who sculpts in stone that is stunning design. I might even have to visit the place one day
Joe W. on 05.31.2011 at 11:37 AM
This, of course, is a ridiculous proposition. Has anyone considered the theological ideas behind the ontology of a church? A church, among other things, is an anticipated participation in the Heavenly Jerusalem, not an opportunity for trendy eco-sensitivity. The church building represents the New Earth of chapters 4, 20 and 21 of the Book of revelation and the fulfillment of the Temple of Solomon and is an imaged of the perfected Mystical Body. It is described as ordered, perfected, radiant, and composed of gold and gems. Why give this cathedral an icy and fundamentally ignorant renovation that is theologically wrong? A “mineral feeling?” Really? Come on! See the absurdity of this claim. How about a “sacramentally present eschatological reality” that is primarily about presence and not about earthly ideas of feelings?
The reviewer’s language reveals what he “likes best.” Frankly, so what? The real question should be intellectually rigorous: Is this an adequate sacramental presentation in stone of the very nature of a church. Hilly topography is a gimmick and is completely inadequate. Can the architect define the word “ontology”? Can the architect define the word “eschatological”? Can the architect explain how architecture serves a sacramental purpose? And then reconcile these notions with all of received tradition? If not, it is time to choose another designer.