Gottfried Böhm obituary
Pointing its twisted concrete peaks high above the historic German town of Neviges, the Mariendom is one of the strangest churches of the 20th century. Standing as a jagged, mystical mountain, punctured by tiny square windows, it is the work of Gottfried Bohm, who has died aged 101. The venerable architect leaves a legacy of more than 60 churches across Germany, as well as other public buildings that exude his unique expressionist style, informed by his training as a sculptor. In Bohm's hands, colossal masses of concrete could be folded, chiselled and carved, as if by powerful tectonic ruptures.
Completed in 1968 and regarded as his most important work, the Neviges pilgrimage church was the result of a competition, for which Bohm submitted an unearthly crystalline model. It was a fragmented cluster of angular forms, more meteorite than maquette, like something sent down from planet Krypton.
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