For ages, European architecture was closely affiliated with and shaped by Christianity. The general typology of Gothic cathedrals of medieval England or the domed Basilicas of Renaissance Italy, were constructed to reflect and emulate the grandeur, might and beauty of an omnipresent, almighty, all-seeing god. The prevalent dominance of conservative institutions like the Catholic Church also meant that the typology of church architecture remained orthodox. Propelled by the modernising impulses of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, an overall post-war upheaval across the continent was underway. The Catholic Church pursued change in its architectural language to retain and demonstrate its relevance to the modern world. This meant that while preserving its traditionalist character, the church, as a puritanical institution, began to willingly work with many non-believing, younger generation architects, to evolve with a society that was rapidly and radically changing.

Sacred Modernity: The Holy Embrace of Modernist Architecture by photographer Jamie McGregor Smith is intended as a photographic exegesis of this dramatic shift in ecclesiastical architecture across post-war Europe. Accompanied by an introduction by Smith (In Search of the Ineffable), as well as two essays by architect and academic Ivica Brnić, and writer and journalist Jonathan Meades respectively, the monograph documents the boldly designed, concrete-led industrial aesthetic that churches adopted. This change, so far removed from the conventional disposition of cathedrals and domed basilicas, received praise and welcome as much as attributions to sacrilege—an extant debate between modernists and traditionalists.

Starting 1960s, the modernist expression of Christian sacred spaces of worship in Europe began taking shape, almost in radical defiance of orthodoxy, in a liberated spiritual expression. Smith’s 200+ page book, in its photographic collation, examines and traces how these houses of worship went into remarkable, newer directions, some emanating jubilant antagonism, others sentient in their cavernous, primal, brutalist demeanour. Half a century on, Smith recces how the use of materials and ideals patinated, the forms that these spaces took across the ideals of Brutalism, structural expressionism and modern architecture. “This was the period when the church married the atheist architect and brought a child of pure form. For a church that depends on cultural relevance and architects that crave carte blanche, this was a marriage made in heaven,” mentions Smith in the book’s introduction.

Smith recalls how in the summer of 2018, he left his London home of 11 years and moved to Vienna, Austria, where he began exploring the city’s architecture. “As a photographer, I am always inspired by the bold historical changes that leave a visible mark on our social landscape,” he mentions, alluding to the character that the city took on with these pieces of sculptural religious architecture. Church doors remained open in Vienna, even when the world shut down when the global pandemic hit. “Whilst civilisation held its breath, I silently navigated these unorthodox spaces and attempted to understand how and who had realised them. This began a photographic journey that has, over four years, driven me from inner city housing estates to Swiss mountain villages, captivated by the extraordinary, supernatural structures that so freely express imagination. Whether you believe in a God or not, they remain awe-inspiring,” he says.

Published with Hatje Cantz, Sacred Modernity found its genesis when Smith encountered the Wotruba Catholic Church in Leising, Vienna. The church’s author then relayed how its concept took form as a sculpture, a design delivered to him by God in a dream. “I was bewildered,” Smith admits, “that this piece of progressive art, consisting of 152 irregular concrete blocks had been commissioned by such a conservative institution. It refined my idea of what a church could be: at once beautiful yet brutal. My search broadened, and I quickly discovered a whole movement in modernist sacred architecture.”

Who would have believed religion could be addictive? – Jamie McGregor Smith

Through this medium of architectural photography, Smith attempts to corroborate how the predisposition of Neo-gothic towers, gold-tipped basilicas, and Romanesque columns swiftly shifted residence to forms of concrete cuboids and stark spaces made distinct in their reduction or complete stripping of heavy embellishment. “The cultural revolution that followed the Second World War championed modern architects like Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier. Their machine-age aesthetic removed the symbology of the past and embraced the clean utility of contemporary materials. The church is fashion-conscious through necessity, and the fashion of the day was concrete modernism. Post-war Europe was poor and conveniently, concrete was cheap,” he relays in the book’s introduction.

These cultural shifts were directly reflected in the works of post-war architects, many staunch believers in the modernist message of programmatic functionalism, and this was replicated in the design of cultural spaces of worship, which began eschewing exact theological replication. In place of just upholding stories and traditions of the past, the culture demanded spaces, especially those of the high positioning ones like temples of worship, to be free from the trauma of war and loss. Ideated and constructed by survivors of a war-torn world, the idea of faith-led institutions took on garbs of rehabilitation and abstraction, “acutely aware of the speed of change around them,” he adds.

The 139 coloured photographs (some of which form part of this photo essay) of over 100 documented churches are categorised into chapters named 'Aphophatic,' 'Illumination,' 'Omnipresence,' 'Sanctuary,' 'Ark,' 'Cave,' 'Transcendence,' 'Magisterial,' and 'Incarnation,' with descriptive opening texts by Smith clarifying the sorting criteria.

These buildings are a portal between two worlds: enlightenment and dogmatism, historicism and futurism, the rational and the supernatural. – Jamie McGregor Smith

Following Smith’s introduction is Brnić’s essay titled Gravity and Grace, which delineates faith as a stimulus to architecture, and the resultant architectural achievements that reflected the specific needs of an evolving epoch. He studies how the Catholic Church navigated social and political transformations while upholding its sacred traditions: The interplay between gravity—representing tradition and stability—and grace—symbolising adaptability and renewal through new-era, industrial buildings, emphasising the relationships between religion, culture, and modernity. “These buildings do not lend themselves to typological generalisation: unlike the basilica or the crossed-dome church, they are not vestiges of a tamed typology,” he asserts. He also delves into the change in structural frames, demarcated zones, and the use of reinforced concrete as an essential common denominator, and how that material choice essentially strays from the literality of ‘building stone by stone,’ as in the biblical parable from the First Epistle of Peter (The Bible, 1st Peter 2:5).

The book ends with Meades’s idiosyncratic essay, The Absentee Landlord, wherein he deliberates on God as “a human construct, an invention, a fiction, an irrational absurdity.” Questioning the prevailing moral basis of the institution itself, he also mentions how “churches—the buildings—cannot be denied,” and the reformative effects that modernism brought to Christian temples. Apart from noting Christianity as a death cult and how that reflects in its designed spaces, Meades revisits the church’s predominant Gothic and Baroque aesthetic, and how that stylistic association varied post-war, into more solemn, abstracted spaces of concrete architecture, with “no pomp, no majesty… the choreography of emptiness. The images suggest either the numinous or god’s long-term absence. They ask questions and supply no answers.”

Despite Meades' assertions of the church’s outdated concepts, Sacred Modernity’s rich photographic offerings reveal the disposition of these structures as still aspiringly beautiful, powerfully distinct, and somewhat relevant, even in the face of dwindling believers. He alludes to a similar observation in the book's beginning: “Churches, whether crafted from enduring stone or solid concrete, are designed to withstand the tests of time. The belief that these structures—along with the culture and values they encapsulate—will outlive us, provides solace and satisfies our innate desire for a lasting legacy and a touch of immortality. This sense of perpetuity is a fundamental aspect of religious offerings; regardless of the manifold societal and environmental shifts, the constancy of dogma and social structure remains comforting. Whether one adheres to a faith or not, these architectural marvels serve as living museums, preserving a nation’s historical narrative and collective identity.”