Renaissance of a Local Centre

architect Ernst Beneder
project Parish Church, Gallspach, Upper Austria
written by Friedrich Achleitner

If anybody doubted the spiritual potency of today’s architecture, its expressive power, cultural presence, social meaning, the capability of spatial organization of complex systems on a particular location, and the creation of consistent, impressive spatial sequences, i.e. if anybody doubted the autonomy and singular quality of today’s architecture, they should come and see the church in Gallspach in Upper Austria.

 

Starting points: a market town in a farming area with 2800 inhabitants, with a sanatorium well-known outside the borders of the region, built in 1929 by students of Otto Wagner, with a palace and a way-too-small church, built in the late Middle Ages, that did not suit the needs of the inhabitants, especially not the sanatorium guests.