Simply off Interstate 94 in Collegeville, Minnesota, is a putting architectural surprise that was once dropped at presen via famend architect Marcel Breuer: Saint John’s Abbey Church at Saint John’s College.
“He was from Hungary, originally studied at the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1920s and 30s, and then when Hitler took over the Bauhaus, he moved to London,” mentioned abbey monk Brother Alan Reed. “Eventually, he moved to the United States.”
The Oscar-winning movie “The Brutalist” — a fictional tale a couple of Holocaust survivor and immigrant architect — was once impressed via the abbey’s church, due to a accumulation written via a monk who labored with Breuer.
“The link is that the director of the film had read a small book when he was thinking about this project,” Reed mentioned.
In that accumulation had been that monk’s reminiscences from mins he saved of conferences with the architect.
Constructed between 1958 and 1961, the church was once a part of a bigger seeing for the rising monastery that Reed has ensured remains true for just about 60 years.
“It was conceived after the Second World War, so both the university and the abbey grew quite, quite a bit in those years,” he mentioned. “Finally, it was decided we need an architect to help us plan that.”
The movie is loosely according to Breuer, even though not like within the film, he was once by no means in Germany throughout the Holocaust and was once now not practising Judaism on the past.
For clergymen like Reed, having the Hollywood highlight radiance on his Midwestern school is thrilling.
“I would love it if it helps people to appreciate that this is a sacred space,” Reed mentioned.
