Anna Boučková
The monography focuses on the issue of contemporary liturgical space in the buildings of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, the largest non-Catholic church in Bohemia. Its aim is to fill the void left by this issue in the literature as well as in intra-church discussions. The architectural conception of space is seen here as a key factor for the experience of liturgy, while at the same time it is seen as embodying the different views, approaches and needs of individual communities. The thesis tries to trace the various tendencies emerging in the formulation of the Czech Brethren liturgical space after 1989 and then demonstrates these general phenomena with concrete examples from practice. Thus, it offers insights into, for example, the layout (linear, semicircular, central…), the representation of liturgical centres of gravity (the Lord’s Table, the Lord’s Table and the ambo, the merging of the Lord’s Table and the ambo) or the approach to artworks in the post-revolutionary liturgical space. It addresses the question of the choice of architect, the financial aspect of the realization or the role of the pastor in the whole process of preparation and realization of the new liturgical space. An integral part of the work is also to set the contemporary topic in a historical context. By looking into the history of the church and the changes of the liturgical space over the centuries, we can better understand the principles that appear in the contemporary sacral architecture of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. The two case studies of the most recent Czech Brethren interior realizations (the reconstruction of the worship space of the church in Hodslavice and the congregation house in Prague’s Smíchov) conclude the whole work and reflect all the ideas presented in the text of the thesis.