Church Architecture - Postmodernism

Postmodernism

As with other Postmodern movements, the Postmodern movement in architecture formed in reaction to the ideals of modernism as a response to the perceived blandness, hostility, and utopianism of the Modern movement. While rare in designs of church architecture, there are nonetheless some notable examples as architects have begun to recover and renew historical styles and "cultural memory" of Christian architecture. Notable practitioners include Dr. Steven Schloeder, Duncan Stroik, and Thomas Gordon Smith.

The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound. Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had evolved through centuries of building—often maintaining meaning in literature, poetry and art—but which had been abandoned by the modern movement.

• Petäjävesi Old Church, Central Finland

• Jaszczurówka Chapel in Poland's Podhale region, built in the Zakopane Style

• Kizhi Pogost, Kizhi island, Lake Onega, Russia

• Roswell Presbyterian Church Original Building, Roswell, Georgia, USA

• Wooroolin Church, Queensland, Australia

• Italy

• Italy

• England

• Collegiate Church of St Vitus

• Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano

• San Bartolo

• Rococo choir of Church of Saint-Sulpice, Fougères, Ille-et-Vilaine, Bretagne, France, begun 16th century and finished after a break in the 18th century

• Church Saint John the Baptist of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France

• Pandu Parrochial Church, Indonesia

• Romanesque interior, Schöngrabern, Austria

• St Bartholomew-the-Great

• St Martin's in the Fields

• Presbyterian church, Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia, 1826

• Queensland Carpenter Gothic

• Alexander Nevsky church in Potsdam, the oldest example of Russian Revival architecture