From a library in Canada to a skatepark in Spain, churches around the world are being reconfigured to serve new purposes. Clare Dowdy selects 10 of the best.
Completed in 1828, the grade II* listed Sheerness Dockyard Church had languished as a ruin since it was ravaged by fire in 2001. It now has a new lease of life as a workspace hub for young entrepreneurs on the Isle of Sheppey, one of the most deprived parts of Kent in the south of England.
Saint-Lazare priory in the Loire Valley is part of the redevelopment of Fontevraud Abbey and the four surrounding priories that make up a monastery complex dating from the Middle Ages. Agence Jouin Manku has transformed the protected interior of Saint-Lazare priory into a hotel and restaurant. The designers introduced custom-designed freestanding furniture to divide spaces in the chapel, chapter house and refectory, and the latter is now a banqueting hall with an 8m-long dining table.
This 1864 Methodist church building in the Hamptons' Sag Harbor, NY, was built in the Italianate style. It was deconsecrated and sold in 2007. After a number of false starts under three previous owners, it was bought in 2017 by the current owners Eric Fischl and April Gornik. They briefed Skolnick Architecture+Design Partnership to preserve it in its stripped-down state. They added a mezzanine and modern elements like the glass elevator.
The Eglise Christ-Roi was built in the city of Sherbrooke, Quebec, in the 1940s, designed by Alphonse Bélanger. In 1965, the lower part of the church was covered with marble slabs. The last Mass was celebrated in 2006, and the church closed its doors and was sold. Vertige Escalade Inc now run it as a climbing gym. In the design by architecture firm Carlo Rondina, climbing walls are positioned around the perimeter and in a vast central block.
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