N G KERK WELKOM- WES: REFORMING UNITY TEMPLE. Part 1 : What the building wants to be.

Abstract

Fifty years ago an early design by one of South Africa’s most in influential architects of the 20th Century was accepted for a new church at Welkom in the Free State. Although mired in controversy virtually from inception, the NGK of Welkom-Wes ranks as one of the key Brutalist buildings of South Africa and best known buildings of the late Roelof Uytenbogaardt, yet it is recognised mainly from photographs as he never wrote about the church. The NGK of Welkom-Wes is generally acknowledged as being based on Wright’s Unity Temple and this article will focus on the innate capacity of adapting that concept for a church of another denomination 60 years after the prototype. As an architectural biography, the article aims at de-mystifying the genesis, design and construction of the church, perhaps equally reviled and admired.