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The community center St. Pius by Franz Füeg from the year 1966 continues to set standards, and is achieved in its consequence of the pure construction and material use to date of no other construction: While the church appears from the outside as a matter-of-fact white steel construction, shine the only 28 mm thin marble walls in the interior in the colors of daylight. The entire 13-meter-high cube is transformed with the simplest means into a sacral experience space that leaves an unforgettable impression. The geometric rigor and the clarity of the proportions help the building to assert itself against the mighty mountain backdrop of Lake Lucerne and in the midst of the heterogeneous residential development; the white of the marble seems to enter into a dialogue with the distant glaciers. In the interior, this dialectic continues through the contrast between the rhythm of the 74 sharp-edged steel columns and the picturesque structure of the natural stone wall paneling. The whitewashed, polished walls glow bluish in the morning and honey yellow in the evening sun and emanate a strong emotional warmth and material presence with their velvet-gray surface.The interior is dramatically lit by a round skylight as the only source of daylight, from the outside, this dome is barely perceptible.On the grid of 1.68 x 1.68 not only the church, but the entire system is built. The topography of the light slope is exaggerated by Füeg with a base made of exposed concrete, which forms a terrace-like layout and creates a distance from the banal environment. Decisive is this environment also for the way to the inconspicuous entrance in the on-board facade as mental preparation for the service.Despite the strict underlying order in the grid, the entire complex exudes an informal atmosphere that gives the community plenty of room to unfold. The fact that people still value their community center is shown by the excellent state of the building itself, which has continued since the time of the extensive refurbishment at the end of the 1990s.
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Tags: Classic, switzerland
Information provided in part by: Detail