Last October, an open day was held in the ensemble of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. Local residents and tourists were able to visit the diocese's "administration" complex, accompanied by the ministers of the church, who acted as guides. The key event of the day was the ceremonial opening of the memorial room by the head of the diocese, Bishop Gebhardt Fürst, in the episcopal palace dedicated to Johannes Baptist-Sproll (1870–1949): he was the seventh bishop of this diocese and devoted much effort to the fight against fascism, and persecution.
But for us the most important thing is that the visitors were finally able to see what the ensemble of the diocese has become after a large-scale restructuring that took the last four years: in addition to inspecting all the buildings, the participants of the Open Day watched a film about the implementation of the project to renovate the complex.
The process of formation of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart goes back to the distant 12th century, but its final form only dates back to 1821. Its ensemble in Rottenburg am Neckar passed almost the same path through history. Buildings of the 12th century here, of course, can no longer be found, but by 2002, when a competition was announced for a project to unite and renovate a complex of buildings from different eras, one could find the Renaissance, Baroque and interwar buildings of the 20th century. In this competition, the LRO Stuttgart bureau took only third place, but it was they who eventually got down to work on the project. The main task for the architects was to add new buildings to the existing divided buildings and, as a result, create an ensemble of the religious center of the diocese.
Note that the LRO bureau has already dealt with religious construction more than once: in 1999 they expanded the building of the Catholic Academy in Stuttgart, and in 2001 and 2009 community centers were built there according to their projects.
In order to unite the individual buildings of the diocese complex, the architects erected a hall for official events of the episcopate there as a dominant feature. At the same time, the new building serves as an entrance to the territory of the ensemble. In its forms, it resembles the Baroque Church of St. Joseph, which was built at the beginning of the 18th century, but was destroyed 64 years later. The church stood right in the middle of the alley, and now it was also the task of the architects to arrange a through passage behind the building of the hall. This reconstructed lane, in turn, leads to the old center of the complex - the square in front of the bishop's palace.
The building of the hall really looks like a church, both inside and outside. The hall itself is illuminated from above through glass hatches, and the white surfaces of the walls and ceilings reflect the light onto the bright red marble floor. There are three tiers of rounded balconies on the walls, reminiscent of galleries in the side aisles of a Catholic cathedral. The façade also refers to Baroque churches: its completion resembles a torn pediment, a favorite architectural element of the era.
LRO also expanded the diocesan archive building and designed a new extended administrative building in the northern part of the complex. The latter is a bit like a powerful fortress wall that once surrounded the city. To avoid the monotony possible for the long façade, the architects gave the window ribbons a zigzag relief shape.
All these architectural overlaps between the new and the old have a fundamental basis: the LRO tried to act according to the plans of the diocese complex of 1659 and 1774. The bureau proudly notes that in order to achieve the unity of the historical and modern parts, only those materials were used during the construction that were used here and before - brick, wood, copper, natural stone. The light gamut of building facades (dominated by white and ocher colors), indeed, has become common for the entire architectural ensemble of the diocese. True, any visitor will be able to distinguish modern buildings from historical monuments, even without professional knowledge: the plaque of time is not a task for architects, we will leave it to the history itself.
