Meaning and Material Towards a Multidisciplinary Assessment of Post-War Church Roofs 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.