Roosenberg Abbey
The new Roosenberg Abbey was built in 1975 by the Dutch Benedictine monk-architect Dom Hans van der Laan.
The expressive elementary architecture, composed through a proportional system, is marked by pure forms, explicit simplicity and a rhythmical spatial ordering that induce beauty and quietness. The aesthetic experience of the space and its architectural forms is equally strongly related to the subtle interplay between 'inside' and 'outside', and between 'open' and 'closed'.
This timeless modern architecture is a rare and unique example of a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk. Also the refined interior objects and convent gardens, equally designed by Dom Hans van der Laan, reinforce the harmony and spatial unity.
Dom Hans van der Laan (1904-1991) holds a prominent position in 20th century religious architecture. With a modest built oeuvre in The Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden, he is one of the exceptional architects that made a fundamental contribution to church building. He developed his ideas on architecture through several publications and books. His masterpiece irrefutably is the abbey near Vaals, the place where he spent most of his life and where he was buried. Still Roosenberg Abbey is unique as Van der Laan's first freestanding newly built project. In the 1970's, Van der Laan developed his manifesto 'Architectonic Space' and nowhere its dynamic spatial concepts as 'nearness' or 'superposition' are realized more intrinsically than through these stones.
Text from The Roosenberg Abbey
