CHURCH Studio

CHURCH Studio

Leonidas Koumouris

Studio Description

a greek orthodox church in melbourne  …

WHY?

2025; the studio description remains relatively close to its previous iterations.

We are STILL in a moment of cultural atomisation, of bland conformism. The public sphere STILL expects us to adhere to a strict set of ideas, to adhere to a conformity of nomenclature. Mostly this is pantomime, we know it’s pantomime, but we all go along with it anyway (with all of us knowing that everyone else is going along with it, just like us). We are performing this act for no one. We defer to an “illusory accord.”

We harbour a closet desire to speak about things in a way we’ve been told we can’t.

HARK! BEAUTY!

This has manifested in architecture as an academic inability to talk about beauty, to refer to things as beautiful, to allow ourselves to justify things because they simply look good. If we are not allowed to be proponents of aesthetics, then who is? We have retreated too deeply into the pragmatic without really ever discussing (or being able to discuss) the importance of aesthetics to architecture, to the public.

This is not an attempt to undermine the pragmatic or the scientific, but to join them, at the altar, with beauty.

CHURCH and REGULATION

A church provides the perfect framework for aesthetic speculation.

Do not concern yourself with the political implications of religion, concern yourself with the political implications of architecture.

A church is extremely rigid in its architectural requirements. Its components are well defined, non-negotiable. A religious building in 2025 is not exempt from the pragmatisms of regulatory limitations imposed on any public building.

Simultaneously, part of a church’s program, part of a church’s pragmatics, is in its aesthetics. A main requirement of a church is to provide a space to be spiritual, to be removed from oneself. This is impossible to quantify in the language of the illusory accord - here, we require a language of abstraction. To talk about beauty for the sake of beauty.  To talk about scale for the sake of scale.

So, we’ll attempt to do a complete work of architecture.  Simple, really. A Church that adheres to the regulatory requirements of the 21st Century. It’s not architecture if it doesn’t. But also! a church that engages with all of the subjectivity, the wild claims, the irrationality and the contradictions involved in trying to define beauty objectively. We won’t be scared to say that something works simply because it's beautiful.

Studio Outcomes

1. The Precedent and the Program - Students will engage in a precedent study of a single building - it may or may not be a church, that’s unimportant. The exercise will be short and sharp. A clean set of documents will be produced. A plan, a section, an elevation, a render. We will operate at scales of 1:200 and 1:20. We will aim to establish a formal drawing language for each student individually and for the studio holistically. This will include an essay describing and analysing the necessary components of an Orthodox Church.
2. Students will replicate the existing conditions of the site and its surrounds. Students will speculate on appropriate or inappropriate contemporary responses to a religious building, engage with more precedents, redraw, engage with classical responses, and repeat. The project will begin to take shape at scales of 1:20 and 1:200 . The detail is essential, but it is nothing without an overriding logic. Students will begin to engage with the overall programmatic assemblage, as well as primitive configurations within space. Students will slowly form a 'position' on beauty, on their response to architecture. There is no guarantee that these will be related. Students will begin to challenge 'market logic', what makes a good public space, and how to interpret global forces from within the place.
3. In the final period of semester, students will continue with their proposals, and start to formulate their ideas in both speculative representation and generic documentation. The project will balance a supremely well resolved piece of architecture with the abstraction contained in trying to define beauty. A rigorous research project manifested as architectural response. The 1:20 and 1:200 scales provide an astute level of detail and a platform for speculation, for a traditional approach to architecture made contemporary through a lack of attention. If we are not an authority on beauty, then who is?
4. It is an expectation that students will engage, converse and participate in class regularly, if not always. The booklet will engage deeply with PC18, PC24, PC16, PC12, PC3, PC23. Throughout the semester students will engage with a series of readings that may or may not inform their work. The aim here is to establish an understanding of theory, of world forces, and of architecture as 'hard precedent'. These things are not always compatible, and they do not need to literally be tied together or influence each other. Awareness is the key, not heavy-handed referentialism.

Studio Leader/s

Leonidas Koumouris is an architectural designer working in Melbourne. He has taught in Sydney, Spain and Melbourne. Leonidas is director of myriad.industries.

Readings & References

EAST/WEST SCHISM

Schedule:
Tuesday  3pm-6pm, MSD 140
Friday 3pm-6pm,  MSD 140