Modern Religious Architecture in Germany, Ireland and Beyond

The reform of German church architecture has inspired Irish architects designing churches in Ireland, Africa, and the United Kingdom, as well as impacted upon the design of synagogues and mosques in both countries, while growing secularisation has also made the adaptive reuse of existing church structures important.

Modernity and religion are not mutually exclusive. Setting German and Irish church, synagogue and mosque architecture side by side over the last century highlights the place for the celebration of the new within faiths whose appeal lies in part in the stability of belief they offer across time. Inspired by radically modern German churches of the 1920s and 1930s, this volume offers new insights into designers of all three types of sacred buildings, working at home and abroad. It offers new scholarship on the unknown phenomenon of mid-century ecclesiastical architecture in sub-Saharan Africa by Irish designers; a critical appraisal of the overlooked Frank Lloyd Wright-trained Andrew Devane and an analysis of accommodating difficult pasts and challenging futures with contemporary synagogue and mosque architecture in Germany. With a focus on influence and processes, alongside conservationists and historians, it features critical insights by the designers of some of the most celebrated contemporary sacred buildings, including Niall McLaughlin who writes on his multiple award-winning Bishop Edward King Chapel and Amandus Sattler, architect of the innovative Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Munich.