Berlin

White cubes: a Berlin church

We're serious fans of Berlin's post-war and contemporary churches, many of which represent some of the city's most interesting recent architecture, but rarely receive the kind of coverage they really deserve.

A case in point is Charlottenburg's sleekly sculptural St Canisius Catholic church, which was inaugurated in 2002 to replace a former, late '50s building destroyed by fire in 1995.

Consisting, essentially, of two intersecting open and closed concrete cubes, the structure's apparent simplicity is offset by carefully considered details such as a curved incision to the roof that follows the protruding form of a wood-clad chapel below.

A powerful essay in 'less is more' drama, it's unsurprising that the development gained a top design award in 2003.

For architecture enthusiasts it's also a winner, one of those lesser-known Berlin highlights that's absolutely worth checking out.

See also:
An expressionist masterpiece
A modernist church
Brutalism meets the Baroque

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