Walter Maria Förderer is the masterful modern architect you've never heard of

2019-05-07T13:48:00-04:00

In the 1960s, Walter Maria Förderer designed eight churches in Switzerland and Germany. Influenced by Le Corbusier, and even more so by the collages of Kurt Schwitters and Gothic architecture, Förderer designed cascades of concrete blocks and strange totemic objects that now form some of Europe’s most avant-garde religious buildings.

It is always a delight and a mystery when one learns of a new name to add to their account of architecture history — a delight because with their name comes new buildings, textures, contexts and drawings to discover; a mystery because their near erasure from historical canon can appear suspiciously willful.

While Gottfried Böhm and Le Corbusier are perhaps the first to come to mind when considering the significant architects of Post War European churches, Walter Maria Förderer rightly deserves a spot on the list. Like Corbusier, Förderer was a Swiss architect obsessed with the structural and material properties afforded by concrete, and was uniquely determined to treat the material as he had during his earlier career as a sculptor.

The Church of St Nicholas, by Walter Maria Förderer. Photo by David Willen.

The Church of St. Nicholas (above) is one of his most exemplary works. Though the building does employ a small handful of modernist principles, it signals an interest in post-func...

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Walter Maria Förderer is the masterful modern architect you've never heard of