Meaning and Material. Assessing the Roof Structures of Post-war Parish Churches in a Context of Adaptive Reuse.

In the 1960s, massive suburbanisation and religious renewal let to a
new type of church building: an open and informal space that could
be erected quickly and cheaply. Novel building materials and
construction methods were employed to this end (e.g. laminated
timber beams, pre-stressed concrete beams or steel ‘space frames’),
and often left exposed as an explicit token of modernity. Thus, the
roof (structure) became the signature element of these new
churches, both in their exterior and interior appearance. Today, by
contrast, they have become their Achilles Heel: since the survival of
church buildings increasingly depends on their potential to
accommodate new uses, their renovation and improvement is all too
often carried out with disregard for their cultural significance,
architectural characteristics and heritage value. Borrowing methods,
concepts and ideas from Construction History, Conservation Theory,
Building Pathology and Adaptive Reuse, and combining historical
analysis, case study research and research-by-design, this project
will uncover how structural innovation contributed to the typological
renewal of church building in the post-war era; reinterpret traditional
heritage criteria to its specificity; and develop specific expertise
enabling the diagnosis and remediation of material defects in their
roof structures. Thus, it will provide essential clues in adapting the
post-war parish church to the technical and functional challenges of
the future.