Parish Church near Munich
- Julia Liese
With its gleaming white roof, the Church of the Blessed Father Rupert Mayer has become a new landmark in Poing, a municipality some 20 km east of Munich. The sculptural form of the roof is set on top of a storey-height plinth of conglomerate stone from the Munich gravel plain. Seen on plan, the roof is divided into four sections which are borne by a steel structure. The homogeneous outer skin of this crowning element, consisting of roughly 15,000 ceramic tiles with distinct profiles, lends the roof a crystalline appearance. The differently angled surfaces of the glazed tiles echo the form of the roof itself and result in a diffraction of light that changes according to daylight conditions. With the exception of the flat tiles used in peripheral areas, the same type was applied throughout, but the various angles of the tiles create an animated, textured surface.
