Brisbane church architecture of the 1960s

Abstract

The twentieth century was a time of massive upheaval in the intellectual, theological and architectural spheres of society. Two world wars, massive post-war population growth and a building boom coincided with the Second Vatican Council and the liturgical movement within the Christian churches, and encountered the modern movement in architecture. This prompted a demand for a re-evaluation of church building design. In Brisbane, new approaches to church building design emerged in the 1960s, with widely divergent results. The architects, denominations and church parishes within the city — although all sought to address liturgical change and emphasise the active participation of the congregation in the services — held different opinions on how the quintessential church characteristics, immanence and transcendence, could be adapted to modern times. Analysing three exemplary Christian churches in Brisbane, this article demonstrates how in each of these designs their architects sought to evoke immanence and transcendence in a decisively new and modern manner, seeking inspiration from progressive ideas in Europe, Britain and America while striving to create buildings suited to the climate of South-East Queensland. Liturgical change, modern architecture and regional climate considerations provided compounding opportunities to rethink church design from first principles.