Marcel Breuer and a Committee of Twelve Plan a Church: A Monastic Memoir

Authors

Hilary Thimmesh OSB, College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's UniversityFollow

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Description

Internationally renowned architect I. M. Pei commented that if Marcel Breuer's church for Saint John's Abbey had been built in New York instead of the north woods of Minnesota it would be world famous. Hamilton Smith, Breuer's longtime associate, wrote that the completed church was that rare thing, an architectural design fully realized, and he regarded it as Breuer's finest achievement. The junior member of the twelve-monk planning committee recounts in warm and frequently humorous detail how its members related to the Hungarian-born Bauhaus-trained architect who had no background in church architecture but shared their belief in the enduring quality of simple materials sympathetically used. How the strong architect-client relationship survived the strain of disagreement at a critical moment in completion of the church is the narrative high point in this informal record of four years in which the reader sees a masterpiece of modern church architecture take shape.

Related Content

• Geib, Michael, "Building the Saint John's Abbey Church" (2012). Saint John’s Abbey Publications. Paper 2.
• Lange, David Paul OSB, "Designing a Church for Saint John's in the Mid-20th Century: What the Architect and the Monks Had in Mind" (2013). Benedictine Institute Lectures. Paper 3.
• Roloff, Ronald, Colman J. Barry, Baldwin W. Dworschak, and Marcel Breuer. Abbey and University Church of Saint John the Baptist, 5^th ed. Collegeville, MN: 1980.
• Saint John's Abbey, "Saint John's Abbey Church." Saint John's Abbey :: Home.
• Young, Victoria M. Saint John's Abbey Church: Marcel Breuer and the Creation of a Modern Sacred Space. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2014. [Book in the CSB/SJU Libraries print collection.]
  
  

ISBN

9780974099279

Publication Date

2011

Publisher

Saint John's University Press

City

Collegeville, MN

Disciplines

Architecture | Christianity

Recommended Citation

Thimmesh, Hilary, and Marcel Breuer. Marcel Breuer and a Committee of Twelve Plan a Church: A Monastic Memoir. Collegeville, Minn: Saint John's University Press, 2011.

Comments

Access to the full text is restricted to current members of the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University community.

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