Swiss Religious Heritage Day 2021

_{Flexible church interiors. Current redesigns}

Many parishes today express the desire to be able to use their church rooms in a more diverse way. This requires adjustments in terms of room design, seating arrangements, lighting and acoustics. However, existing church rooms do set limits. The Swiss Religious Heritage Day 2021 analyzes the background of the concern for flexibility and explores the possibilities for flexible designs and uses of church rooms. Questions, problems and solutions will be discussed on the basis of current new designs.

The conference offers a rich programme with opportunities for interaction. It will begin with two presentations that will introduce the topic of flexibility from an ecclesiastical and a heritage conservation perspective. Then six churches will be presented that have been redesigned in recent years for more flexible use or whose redesign is in the planning stage. These include Sacré-Coeur in Geneva, the abbey of Hauterive, the reformed Church in Kloten, the reformed Church in Langenthal, St Peter's Chapel in Lucerne and the reformed church in Felsberg.

In the afternoon there will be an opportunity to discuss the projects presented in the morning together with other examples in smaller groups. The discussions will be moderated by experts from the church, monument preservation and architecture. This will be followed by five short presentations by specialists on the topics of furniture, lighting, technology and acoustics. Where churches are redesigned for more flexible use, these topics are also affected. The conference will end with a panel and plenary discussion in which two representatives of the churches and two representatives of heritage conservation will reflect on the conference.

Under the heading Programme you will find the detailed programme as well as the names of all those actively involved in the conference.

All examples of redesigns presented and discussed at the conference are already documented on this website. Click here to go directly to this Documentation flexible church spaces.

Die deutsche Version des Programms finden Sie hier

La version française du programme peut être trouvée ici