The relationship between the traditional and contemporary elements in the church architecture of the Western Christian countries in the 20th century

Abstract

Church architecture has been developing continually within Western Christianity since the 4th century, It gradually becomes less important from the end of the Middle Ages, especially with the advent of the ideas of Reformation and Enlightment, going almost out of the focus of contemporary architecture with the advent of modernism in the 20th century. The most important factors for the development of this building type in the 20th century, were the emergence of modernism in architecture and strengthening of the movements of liturgical renewal. It was a time in which the diametrically opposed concepts - radically modernizing and conservatively traditional - were expressed to the extreme, with many transitional forms, Striving to active participation of believers can lead to completely different results - strengthening the liturgical assembly, on one hand, and radical desacralisation of worship, on the other. There is a large number of architectural solutions, some of which share common characteristics concerning spatial organization and the distribution of laity and clergy, but with a great diversity of other architectural characteristics and different relations of traditional and contemporary elements. The experiences of Western Christian countries can be of use, to some extent, in the research of contemporary Orthodox church architecture.