When you were asked to design a church in Fuzhou’s Jinshan district, Chinese officials and politicians told you that they wanted “a contemporary church for a contemporary China.” How did you interpret this?
In some ways, it is a political sentence. You should fill it with meaning as an architect and as a Christian.
Architects wish to consult with the term genius loci, or “spirit of the place” in Latin, in that a constructing is a response to its immediate built environment, like historic buildings, specific roads, landscape features, and in addition built tradition—an architect’s filtered and amplified perception of a spot’s essence.
Since Chinese Communist leader Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 reforms, the country has been transformed, and cities today don’t have much of a practice as a spot. There are modern buildings built alongside modern roads, with residential developments, offices, factories, and so forth. You don’t have the “spirit of the place” you could react to.
But what’s all the time very essential to me is to grasp the spirit of a community, the spirit of the person congregation. I actually have learned that Chinese Christians are asking themselves big questions: How will this recent constructing express who we’re? How will it relate to this place and fulfill our needs?
Chinese and Western architectural traditions are sometimes in dialogue here, and I attempt to create an inventive synthesis of them. This doesn’t occur on a universal scale but in additional particular terms, akin to: What is the physical environment by which this church goes to grow? What are the concerns of the person community? What are their interests within the European and Western elements of Christianity, if in any respect?
Some years ago, authorities removed crosses from church buildings in China. How do the churches you’ve designed feature crosses?
China is an unlimited country. It’s a continent of its own. It’s hard to say that what happens in a single area will occur in one other a part of the country. Local culture, religious policy, the connection between Christian churches and the religious bureau might differ across places.
I’ve heard that there are regions by which the connection between the authorities and Christian congregations is more harsh. But I’ve never had to think about or compromise my artistic and architectural pursuits.
The crosses I’ve designed involve aesthetic and situational considerations. For instance, the Jinshan church cross is 70 meters high and appears like an easy cross with classic proportions. The surprise for Chinese Christians lies in its color.
Almost all Protestant churches today have a red cross on top of their spire—it’s quite chubby and fabricated from plastic to be illuminated at night. Westerners often feel reminded of the Red Cross or hospital signs. So I opted against that color and the neon light illumination and proposed to have it in white to enrich the purity of the church constructing below it.
Image: Shikai / INUCE
Dirk U. Moench
What were some Eastern and Western architectural principles that influenced the churches you designed?
One of the large ideas that I attempt to bring across is the very European notion that the church is a bit of public infrastructure. It’s a part of the town, and it’s there to service the town visually but additionally spatially and functionally. Even though Christianity is a minority religion in China, a church constructing can still be appealing to a broader public. This idea has been received very favorably by the local congregations.
In the West, we expect of a phenomenal curved roof as an icon of Chinese architecture. But what’s most real and central to the thought of Chinese spatial organization is the wall.
Traditionally, the Chinese city consists of courtyard houses, that are fully enclosed by a wall. There shall be a significant gate, often at the middle of the south wall, which has decorative features and slightly roof of its own, that serves to represent this unit, this house, this family, to the surface world. The wall will not be a security concern; it’s a millennia-old tradition.
When missionaries in China began to construct churches there, they often acquired plots in the course of a Chinese city that were once a courtyard house. So the thought of a wall or enclosure around a “Western” church will not be entirely foreign, and this principle was continued.
Hence, the earliest contemporary churches that we’ve in China are all behind partitions and have gates as well. The spatial considering could be very Chinese, while the actual church is more Western-inspired.
Now, I need to challenge this since the Chinese Christian communities that I actually have talked to don’t see themselves as a protective minority anymore. They see themselves as an important element of society that may contribute and help to make a greater city, not only through charitable works but additionally in being a component of public, urban life.
How did you translate this refreshed understanding of Christian community into reality?
The Hua Xiang church in Fuzhou is one example. People call it “the pink church of Fuzhou.” It’s surrounded by high rises and shopping malls, and sits beside an old church built by Methodist missionaries within the Thirties.
Image: Shikai / INUCE
Main Entrance to the Hua Xiang Church.
I used to be not the primary architect that the community had consulted for this project. There were already several designs—a gothic church with two spire towers and one other with a more Romanesque basilica look. The congregation was not very satisfied with these ideas because they looked “lost” and didn’t have a harmonious relationship with the town. At the identical time, they were wondering about their mission and whether the brand new constructing should cater to older members or draw young people.
What I said was that the reply will not be either-or; it’s both-and. To attract young people, you could have to present them a way of historical depth. They must know their foundation and what they’re constructing upon.
We needed to let go of the notion of a European-inspired ideal church, like a cross-shaped church with a tower, and as a substitute take inspiration from the town’s heterogeneous and chaotic situation. Maybe this recent church could help to ascertain positive relationships to the skyline or proceed the pitched roof motif emblematic of Chinese architecture.
Instead of high partitions and formal entrance gates, like in traditional Chinese architecture, we installed retractable barriers at access points to the church, that are hardly visible and stay open late into the night. There is ample greenery providing shade and generous outdoor seating for believers and tourists alike.
Your other church designs also take inspiration from the environment. Why is that essential to you as a Christian and as an architect?
In Chinese cities, you see shops moving out and in, façades being redecorated to look fancier, louder, and more attractive than the neighbors. But a church design is more timeless and stable. It is an architectural mediator that may help to harmonize imbalances within the built environment or bring the fantastic thing about the place into focus.
In this fashion, a church constructing has a dialectical relationship with its environment: It stands out and blends in.
Image: Shikai / INUCE
Julong Church
For example, Julong is a newly developed town within the outskirts of Quanzhou, a port city within the southern province of Fujian. People who live there have come from everywhere in the country. Making the Julong church into an ark or a haven, inspired by the thought of Peter as a rock on which Jesus will construct his church (Matt. 16:18), sends a message of stability throughout the torment of a changing world.
Its location on the foot of Julong mountain also doesn’t just allow people to stare upon the fantastic thing about nature; it’s a visible reference to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus went up a mountain to evangelise and teach.
Do you’re thinking that beautiful church architecture contributes to spiritual practices like worship or prayer? Or is it a distraction?
It’s the age-old Protestant query you’re asking: Does formal beauty encourage and produce you closer to God or distract you from this? That query must be answered by the congregation. As an architect, you can not create a spot of worship that suits your personal inclinations or beliefs. You should take heed to what the community wants.
The interior of the Hua Xiang church is a quite simple white space, with gently undulating upper gallery floors, a flat ceiling, and a reduced variety of lighting fixtures. It’s a really classical, almost Reformed understanding of how a liturgical space should look.
But a big pipe organ, popular in North American churches within the second half of the nineteenth century, functions because the fundamental feature of the stage. That was a wish from throughout the congregation, who wanted a component of continuation with their Methodist heritage.
Does that pipe organ encourage the sermon or encourage prayer? I don’t think so. But I do think that the music it creates does reestablish bonds to the very Christian types of being together. The church appreciates that they feel closer to their very own tradition through it.
Is there something you hope for visitors to those churches to remove about God and about Chinese Christianity?
As an architect, I don’t impose myself into what people should take into consideration God. I’m not here to guard a particular or single understanding of God. I plan and design the physical church, but the true church is the people inside, the pastors and brothers and sisters who preach and project and teach Christianity.
If they think that my architecture helps them to do all of those, then I’m completely satisfied. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to think further than that.
