Description

The Pastoor van Ars Church, built in 1969 by the legendary Dutch Structuralist architect Aldo van Eyck (1918-99) in The Hague, is one of the few significant churches to emerge from the second half of the 20th century. This volume sheds light on the unique architectural and spatial qualities of the building. Although not a Catholic himself, Van Eyck made every effort to build an authentic and contemporary Catholic place of worship. To this end, he harked back to the original typology of the early Christian basilica, whose components he incorporated into new conceptions of space explored by the modernist avant-garde, in particular the dynamic geometries of Mondrian and Brancusi's forms. Author Francis Strauven, who has previously written an extensive monograph on the Dutch architect, pays particular attention to the intensive design process, which he has reconstructed using more than 100 design sketches from the Van Eyck archive.