Brutalism—Wotruba’s Church.

A friend of mine today was lambasting a certain church for its esthetic, however, when looking at things from a radically traditionalist point of view, you tend to ignore the nuance and vision of the people who build things in the modern era—which can lead to ignorance and a willing veil that can restrict one’s appreciation of something that in a novel and profound (for the time it was in) way reflects the transcendentals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

The Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Vienna is a brutalist rendition of a Roman Catholic church, which uses concrete cubes and slabs along with glass to portray a message, which in the mid 1900’s was a very important message to push.

Brutalism is concerned more with “the seeing of materials for what they were: the woodness of the wood; the sandiness of sand” rather than the materials used themselves. So in examining brutalistic architecture, one needs to look at the quality of the material the architect uses, rather than the type of material itself.

Concrete has been around for millennia, and has been used in some of the most iconic, and most long lasting building man has ever built. It is also very cheap and easy to build with, a staple of construction dating back to the Romans. So how does this quality abstract to the building itself? My theory is that the use of concrete here signifies the iconic, everlasting, and humiliating nature of the Church.

The church is iconic, as we all can see, and has been around for near 2 thousand years now, and has given many people the path to heaven. It is everywhere in history and remains to be a big factor in politics now—all the while expanding its influence evermore into more pagan societies. The church is always there—at least in the background—calling more into the people of God, and without it, the world would have never been the same.

The church is everlasting—built by Jesus on top a rock, because rocks don’t fall victim to time as sand and soil does, and will continue to last until the end of days as the bible says. The Coliseum still stands today, the only significant damage to which having been caused by humans looking for more building materials. Concrete does decay and crumble over time in some cases, but with a good mixture, and a little bit of charitable restoration it can last longer than any steel, any marble, any gold, and any human.

The church is humble; being built out of concrete is a sign of impoverishment. Communist statues and housing complexes famously are made out of concrete because of how easy it was to produce, and how cheap the materials were to procure. So building a church out of concrete can symbolize the impoverishment of man—the drastic inability to live a life as rich as was possible before the fall. Yes, we have spent vast riches to honor God, and rightly so, but we must remember to fight against the primarily most deadly sin, Pride—and the best way to do that is through vows of poverty.

The original sculptor who built the church wanted “to create something that shows that poverty does not have to be ugly, that renunciation can be in an environment that, despite its simplicity, is beautiful and also makes you happy” and I think to create something beautiful and profound like that is much better than to not create anything at all.