Peter Krebs’ Petrus Jacobus Church in Karlsruhe, Germany subtly redefines sacred space, uniting two parishes in a luminous ensemble of limewashed brick, sloped roofs, and light-suffused interior volumes.
Amid the quiet residential grids of Karlsruhe’s northwest, Peter Krebs’ Petrus Jacobus Church forms an architectural hinge between past and present, sacred and social. Completed in 2017, the project replaces two modest post-war churches, synthesizing their legacies into a unified liturgical and communal hub. The ensemble—comprising a church, parish hall, and contemplative chapel—is framed by limewashed brick and a choreography of pitched roofs, their varied angles articulating both independence and cohesion.
Krebs’ approach favors reticence over spectacle. The church and parish hall are conceived as autonomous volumes, their solid exteriors punctuated only modestly at the ground floor, opening toward a shared courtyard that gestures outwards to the neighborhood’s central square. The washed, water-struck brick allows the new structure to resonate quietly with its plastered surroundings, while the zigzagging rooflines echo the gabled silhouettes of nearby housing—subtly stitching the sacred into the suburban fabric.
Inside, the space turns upward and inward. The sanctuary, suffused with natural light from east- and south-facing apertures, reveals a gentle gradation of atmosphere over the day. Here, color functions as both memory and merger: red niches and blue ribbon windows salvaged from the two former churches infuse the minimal interior with historical depth and chromatic warmth. The architecture doesn’t announce sanctity—it earns it, slowly, through light, proportion, and silence.
By housing both church and community under one architectural idea, the Petrus Jacobus complex foregrounds function without forfeiting spirit. Awarded for exemplary design by the Baden-Württemberg Chamber of Architects in 2018, the project signals a new kind of ecclesiastical modernism—local, lucid, and quietly luminous.
