Saint John's Abbey Church

Victoria M. Young

"In the 1950s the brethren at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint John the Baptist in Collegeville, Minnesota--the largest Benedictine abbey in the world--decided to expand their campus, including building a new church. From a who's who of architectural stars--such as Walter Gropius, Richard Neutra, Pietro Belluschi, Barry Byrne, and Eero Saarinen--the Benedictines chose a former member of the Bauhaus, Marcel Breuer. In collaboration with the monks, this untested religious designer produced a work of modern sculptural concrete architecture that reenvisioned what a church could be and set a worldwide standard for midcentury religious design. Saint John's Abbey Church documents the dialogue of the design process, as Breuer instructed the monks about architecture and they in turn guided him and his associates in the construction of a sacred space in the crucial years of liturgical reform. A...