Are Our Homes Starting to Look More...Holy?

As organized religion continues to lose its influence, why are living spaces that look like modern chapels having a moment?

In 2020, Ye, previously known as Kanye West, referred to the now infamous monochromatic, Axel Vervoordt–designed mansion where he lived with Kim Kardashian (and where she still resides) as a "futuristic Belgian monastery." Some might’ve just called it minimalist, but what makes Ye’s description of the Hidden Hills mansion feel particularly apt is that the design actually does reference many tenets of modern religious architecture. Its imposing, arched hallways, for one, evoke the landmark Gothic Expressionist-style Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen, completed in 1940. Its bare plaster walls, window cutouts, hunks of stone, and sparse, sculptural settings feel like spaces to pray or meditate; they could easily fit in alongside the light-filled atrium of Alvar Aalto’s late-1970s Riola Parish Church, or the concrete-and-glass Church of Light by Tadao Ando, built in 1989. (West and Kardashian have also both worked with Ando on home designs, though West famously left his in ruins.) Whether Ye’s declaration of the home’s look was trendsetting or trendspotting, one thing is clear: religious aesthetics are in the zeitgeist.

Though Americans are becoming less religious, moving toward other forms of faith and spirituality (while also growing increasingly socially conservative), churches are being readapted as housing, hotels, and even restaurants and nightclubs. Catholic symbolism and religious aesthetics are en vogue in the traditionally secular worlds of art and fashion. Last year, a pared-down bedding style had a moment as a microtrend dubbed "monastic bed-making."

The interior of a Sydney home by Stafford Architecture draws a few similarities to modernist Alvar Aalto’s Riola Parish Church.

The interior of a Sydney home by Stafford Architecture draws a few similarities to modernist Alvar Aalto’s Riola Parish Church.

You don’t have to look far to find other examples of everyday homes that incorporate major aesthetic elements of modern ecclesiastical architecture. A California garage conversion by ADU builder Modern Granny Flat with white walls, curving ceilings, and wooden details, for example, and a Sydney terrace house by Stafford Architecture with a similar palette—plus a slender skylight that creates a holy light-beam effect—are equally reminiscent of the Riola Parish Church interiors. Meanwhile, the geometric cutouts and Tetris-like layout of a concrete cabin in Mexico designed by architect Ludwig Godefroy bring Bristol’s brutalist-style Clifton Cathedral to mind.

The tall, concrete walls and geometric cutouts of the brutalist-inspired Alférez House in Mexico remind of the U.K.’s Grade II*-listed Clifton Cathedral, completed in 1973. 

The tall, concrete walls and geometric cutouts of the brutalist-inspired Alférez House in Mexico remind of the U.K.’s Grade II*-listed Clifton Cathedral, completed in 1973. 

Architecture organized around channeling the divine is not a new concept; in fact, for millennia, creating sacred space, like Greek temples or Islamic mosques and European cathedrals and synagogues, was one of the field’s main concerns. But the desire for visual simplicity in these spaces—swooping, bare surfaces, raw materials, open interiors, and strategically placed openings to capture sunlight—started to take shape in the early 20th century. The (problematic) Austrian occultist Rudolf Steiner’s Goethenaum in Switzerland, for example, was pioneering for its curvilinear, exposed-concrete form when it opened in 1920. The massive domed temple mixed elements of Expressionism and organic architecture; stained-glass windows and skylights flood the pared-down interior with light so as to join its congregation with the divine.

The early 20th-century Goethenaum in Switzerland mixes elements of Expressionism and organic architecture. The temple was pioneering for its curvilinear, concrete form.

The early 20th-century Goethenaum in Switzerland mixes elements of Expressionism and organic architecture. The temple was pioneering for its curvilinear, concrete form.

In the wake of World War II, as expedited fixes for partially destroyed buildings required prioritizing inexpensive and available materials like concrete and plaster, more austere modern architecture became generally accepted across Europe and the United States. By the 1950s, modernist architects like Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, and Eero Saarinen were designing ecclesiastical spaces that were stripped of the ornate decoration of Europe’s previously predominant Gothic or Romanesque revival styles. (Photographer Jamie McGregor Smith’s 2024 book documenting postwar church architecture in Europe calls the look "sacred modernity.")

The recent resonance of "sacred modernist" sensibilities in our homes is about more than actual spiritualism. In our chaotic Information Age, having a personal environment that facilitates peacefulness—and awe, while you’re at it—is just as sacred as an actual place of worship. "A house is an emotional and psychological landscape," says architect Robin Donaldson, of Donaldson+Partners, who recently completed an expansive, concrete-and-glass residence in California with sweeping hallways and atriums and sound-sensitive sitting nooks that evokes a modernist chapel and a transcendent James Turrell installation in equal measure. (In a full-circle moment: Turrell’s Roden Crater served as the backdrop for one of Kanye West’s Sunday Service gospel performances in the 2019 IMAX documentary, Jesus Is King.)

The stairwell of this Melbourne house by LLDS looks like it could be inside the Goethenaum.

The stairwell of this Melbourne house by LLDS looks like it could be inside the Goethenaum.

In her 2017 book, Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives, architecture critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen makes the case for just how profoundly our environments shape our experiences as humans on a neurological level. (Goldhagen is also an expert on Louis Kahn, who himself dabbled in midcentury church design and seemed to have a similar stance on how architecture shapes identity, once saying, "There’s something about a 150-foot ceiling that makes a man a different kind of man," after visiting the Roman Baths of Caracalla.) Sparse, spacious interiors clad in expensive natural materials—whether in a chapel, an in-home meditation room, or a foyer—can foster a soothing atmosphere that’s a psychological luxury. Those same elements also tend to signal wealth (cue: the minimalist look in recent years given the moniker "quiet luxury").

Of course, minimalist aesthetics have long cycled in and out of fashion—and, on its own, the use of raw materials and toned-down palettes, or sculptural walls and towering, sky-lit ceilings, isn’t novel or distinct to a specific type of built environment. But in an era rife with "technostress," political turmoil, and worsening climate anxieties, as well as the ongoing disappearance of "third places," it seems like the combination of elements that make our homes feel transcendent is a little bit more holy.

Top photo of the Rothko Chapel interior by Smiley N. Pool/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images

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