Parish Church of St. Joseph, Holzkirchen, Germany

Object Type
Sacred Buildings

Client
Erzbischöfliches Ordinariat Munich

Architects
Eberhard Wimmer Architekten BDA, Munich

Completion
2018

Expertises
Building Acoustics
Sound Isolation
Room Acoustics
Electronic Room Acoustics

The remarkable new church building of St. Josef in Holzkirchen impresses with its careful architectural design down to the last detail, its shape as an oblique-angled truncated cone and the visible wooden construction made of triangular basic elements. A weekday chapel was built next to the parish church - both are connected via a sacristy.

Both church buildings were constructed entirely in timber as two truncated cones with elliptical floor plans. Such concave curves are considered to be extremely demanding room shapes in acoustic terms. In addition to musical use, emphasis was also placed on good speech intelligibility. When fully occupied, the new parish church should have a reverberation time of two seconds, so that organ music, singing and speech are equally possible. The acoustic acceptance measurements confirm that this goal has been achieved.

The sound-absorbing measures are not visually apparent. Individual triangular panels absorb the sound where necessary. The sound-reflecting panels each have a slight incline, but this does not change the appearance of the room. The visible wooden beams, which characterize the spatial impression in the parish church, provide the reflections that are so important for the room acoustics and ensure good sound mixing. The room shell was developed, simulated and optimized in detail by Müller-BBM Building Solutions in close cooperation with the architect.

Image Copyright
1 Achim Bunz
2 Achim Bunz
3 Achim Bunz
4 Achim Bunz
5 Achim Bunz