Mariendom

When a miraculous engraving in copperplate of the Immaculata was brought to Neviges in the seventeenth century, it became a pilgrimage center for the religious. Around 1960, the church decided that they wanted to construct a new building, starting a competition which would result in a new church amidst a Franciscan monastery and other late-baroque architecture. This led to a series of competitions, eventually won by architect Gottfried Böhm, although initially his design was not accepted as the judges thought it to be exaggerated and manneristic. Even with the lack of other new architecture surrounding the pilgrims as they begin to approach the church, the facade of Mariendom humbles visitors just the same. With its jagged and furrowed mass, it remains as one of the most monumental manifestations of a modern church building as a casted crystal mountain. In the secular context of the culture during the designing and construction periods, the church offered a promise of safety. The invariable nature of the extensive interior caves of both the main and lower churches, the chapel niches formed by jointless folds of concrete, the piers either free-standing or formed by the edges of the walls, and the folded sections illuminated only by small rooflights that peak just above the altar give a sense of protection to the pilgrims.