Eternal life: having established his reputation applying monastic architectural principles to the home and the high street, minimalism comes full circle with John in the Czech Republic.Pawson's design for a new monastery.

While the story of a group of monks stumbling, lost, into Calvin Klein's flagship Manhattan store is an intriguing one, it is sadly not entirely true. What is true, however, is that after years of being inspired by the principles of Cistercian architecture, it was John Pawson's luxurious Madison Avenue interior that inspired the abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Sep-Fonts in Burgundy to invite him to create a new home for an emerging community of monks. Through the publication of his design canon, Minimum, the monks had discovered a contemporary form of architecture that was felt to be appropriate for their new monastery, and Pawson had received 'the commission of a lifetime': an opportunity to create a place where architecture's completeness could be expressed in emptiness; where space, proportion, light and materials could dominate, and where the richness of poverty need not be contrived. Novy Dvur could be the fulfilment of Minimum, serving as an opportunity for Pawson to address critical observations that his work was appropriate for, and in response to, little more than extravagant aristocratic tastes.

Despite the success of his trademark interiors, until now, Pawson has had little opportunity to build anything as substantial as the buildings that originally inspired him. His shop fit-outs were not timeless or permanent, and, for purists, they represented an uncomfortable contradiction, applying monastic scenography to sell excess: rich cakes and fine clothes. But this cannot be said at Novy Dvur, which is a consolidation of his more substantial and respected domestic work. Living in a family home that even the monks considered too austere, Pawson's domestic designs create spaces that elevate day to day acts of sleeping, eating, bathing and dressing, and give potency to even the simplest of tasks.

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With this commission--seen as an essentially domestic typology providing a home for up to forty monks--the success of Pawson's contribution to monastic architecture would ultimately rest on how he could make a place where they could seamlessly integrate rituals of life and religion. And, while influences for Minimum were broad--from Japanese concepts of Zen, to the Quakers and Shakers--the adaptation of St Bernard's twelfth-century architectural model for the Cistercian order remained the obvious precedent, celebrating the long-standing and profound relationship between architecture and theology, through light, proportion, detail and the spatial order of the cloister. But, before detailed design began, Pawson was invited to stay with the monks in the mother monastery in Burgundy. Sharing the rhythm of their lives, he woke before dawn to attend the first of seven daily offices, and took his meals in silence--an experience that gave him a unique insight as he recalled the attraction of the monks' quiet life--a life constructed around simple rituals, repetition and an absence of what is not necessary. With these experiences he was better equipped to set about creating their home, which for many will be the place where they spend their entire lives, without leaving.

When Pawson first visited the site five years ago, it comprised a derelict Baroque manor house with ranges of agricultural buildings that framed a large courtyard. Despite its melancholy beauty, no amount of pleasing decay could hide the serious condition of the structures. So, with buildings in need of demolition, or almost complete restoration, only the manor house was kept, giving Pawson the challenge of how to create a contemporary cloister and find the correct form for new structures that would be free from pastiche and charged with poetry.

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Following St Bernard's model, set within new ranges with simple pared down vernacular elevations, the cloister is the principal organizational device, linking all spaces and enclosing a steeply sloping and closely cropped lawn. Added to this are one or two familiar Pawson motifs that have been reapplied, such as a roof canyon opposite the entrance giving views through the east range, reminiscent of the Neuendorf house, and his trademark narrow timber stairs that having been seen just about everywhere demonstrate that reinvention is not Pawson's passion. Choosing his moments carefully therefore, aside from the dramatic new church that nears completion on site, the key creative element is the form of the cloister itself.

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With no literal precedent in Cistercian architectural history, and in opposition to Corb's cloister at La Tourette--that played with the vertical modulation, proportion and interval as devices to pace the ceremonial route--here Pawson saw columns as superfluous. By reducing the complexity of traditional intersecting rib vaults, he proposed a pure barrel form, cantilevered above a glazed screen. Distinctions between wall and ceiling are diminished, as in the white work of Anish Kapoor, so the eye is incapable of focusing on any point of detail, strengthening the cloister's direct visual relationship with the courtyard.

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Set within 100 acres (40 hectares) of land, 150 kilometres west of Prague, work began on site in the winter of 2000, and is due for completion in September 2004. For a project that curiously began with Calvin Klein, it seemed appropriate for the America fashion designer to make a short visit to the site, after which, instead of donating money, he offered his own design input. So, not only will the Monks be living in the first monastery of the new millennium, but following the examples set by Barragan and Matisse, they may also have designer robes. Meanwhile, for Pawson, this circle is now complete. With this ambition fulfilled, where will he go from here? Will his recent work on the M&S Lifestore concept really change how lay people live their lives, or as some fear, will it be soon be forgotten as a short-term lifestyle fad? Who knows? But perhaps, following the many prayers read by the monks before each design presentation, he now has God on his side.

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Architect

John Pawson Architects, London

Project team

Vishwa Kaushal, Pierre Saalburg, Stephane Orsolini

Executive architect

Jan Soukup

Site engineer

Antonin Svehla

Photographs

John Pawson, Stepan Bartos, Richard Davies 

Novy Dvur, the existing site, 1999.

'Even in ruins it is very beautiful-it has soul, it is true'.

Br M. - Patrick Olive, Abbot of Sep-Fons