The Remodelling of the Parish, Torna, Slovakia

Architect: Jan Krcho
Text: Béla Pazár
Photos: Jan Krcho

In the row of houses facing the street it is surprising that a single-storey flat-roof brick structure stands on the side of the development with a magically unexpected situation. It may have been slightly modified, but we do not know for sure. It was built in the early 20th century. At the top there are two windows, each divided into two parts, an one window beneath subdivided into three units. This free configuration of the openings lacks the compositional ambitions of the modern ones, but is not quite accidental even so: it was build by Bata shoe manufactory in the spirit of the contemporary modernist architecture. Architect János Krcho made changes owing to which the building keeps pace with today’s architecture, but has preserved its original atmosphere. The white-
washed gabled masonry is pierced with a circular opening. It is a well-known ancient sacred component of architecture which has been endowed with a strange secondary technological meaning in 20th-cebtury modernist architecture. This visual design derives from the modern ship design, the aesthetics of the engine in line with engineering calculations, but this impact could not be overwritten by the powers of millennium-old sacred traditions. Viewed from the street, we can feel the presence of the sacred space behind the wall, more precisely its centre. Lacking an entrance, this whitewashed brushed raw masonry is evocative, the taller mass turns inward, the church yard, as if divided from a rural or urban street or square, an open community space, the complex of the house and church opening from here also conveys one of the most important messages of the evangelical tradition: the church is a simple community „preaching room” in the service of the spirit of the liturgy of the very first Christian communities.

Architect: Jan Krcho
Interiors: András Félegyházi