Gregory Burgess Architects

Winner – AIA(VIC) 1987 Victorian Architecture Medal

Jury Report

We dwell, Martin Heidegger tells us, "between earth and sky". Louis Kahn saw architecture existing at the threshold between Silence and Light. These are expressions of enduring verities. The New Catholic Church for the Parish of St Michael and St John embraces such timeless concepts and transcends issues of transitory fashion. It is, in the words of Greg Burgess, "...a modest, but enthusiastic and loving work created by an unusually co-operative team of parishioners, artists, tradesmen, engineers and architects".

The building sits in a broad civic zone on the flat open land of Horsham, held by the street grid under the rural Victorian sky. It grows in dark bricks from the earth, curving, reaching up, questing for this sky and lightening as it ascends. Growing from the wide sheltering verandah, the roof planes mirror the distant hills. The whole culminates in a glass cross held within a circle high in the wall behind and above the sanctuary. The building invites all to enter; the walls shepherd a visitor from any direction toward the entries, then encircle and protect. Within, the narthex begins an axial way down the central aisle of the broad nave to the steps of the sanctuary. Above, the ceiling hovers as if held by the glowing light reflected from the warm brickwork. Although the main internal space is broadly symmetrical, other spaces generate the complex curvilinear plan shape.

This is a building concerned with 'bringing together'. It brings together the skills of the parishioners, the designers, and the craftsmen. It is an exceptional testament to their skills, for it is powerfully conceived and exquisitely constructed in every detail down to the purpose-designed sanctuary furniture. Each week, it brings together people from a far flung parish. It is a magnet and a focus. And, it brings together a complex of forms and symbols into a unified, joyous and tranquil creation intended to "...express and celebrate the human being's journey toward wholeness".

Peter Downton