Julius Nielsen Office’s temporary twelve-sided church in Copenhagen merges apostolic geometry, mobility, and low-impact materials to create a contemporary tabernacle for a neighbourhood in flux.
Tiny Church Tolvkanten by Julius Nielsen Office sits on the edge of Nordhavn like a paradox: temporary yet timeless, modest yet monumental. Commissioned as a provisional tabernacle for a neighbourhood still searching for its identity, the building resists the conventional trappings of ecclesiastical architecture. Instead, it becomes a portable sanctuary — a structure as adaptable as the urban fabric it serves, yet deeply rooted in Christian symbolism.
The twelve-sided plan forms the heart of the project. Each facet represents one of the apostles, enclosing a symmetrical interior lit by a central oculus. This skylight is less ornament than orientation: it connects the sanctuary to the sky, making light itself the principal medium of worship. The geometry is resolutely egalitarian, offering no single axis of power but instead a circle of participation. Here, the sacred is not framed through iconography or material excess, but through proportion, atmosphere, and the slow calibration of light.
The church’s placement is as deliberate as its form. In Fiskerihavnen, where informal settlements meet the encroaching forces of development, Tolvkanten positions itself with restraint. Its footprint rests lightly on screw piles, leaving the terrain of tall grasses largely untouched. Entrances on both south and west open the building to its context, allowing fluid movement between ceremonies and daily life. The surrounding gravel surfaces accommodate both bicycles and hearses, blurring the line between the sacred and the ordinary.
Thresholds play a critical role in Julius Nielsen Office’s design. The veranda, conceived as a reversed narthex, extends the church into the city. Its wooden deck doubles as civic furniture, while a finely crafted bench recalls the intimacy of domestic space. Inside, a ring-shaped transitional zone buffers the sanctuary from the world outside. This interstitial space — at once functional storage and atmospheric filter — modulates the journey inward, slowing time and tuning the senses before entering the central light-filled void.
Material choices underscore the church’s provisional yet enduring character. Exterior timber coated in matte black lime-based paint recalls industrial sheds, while the interior’s whitewashed boards and silicate-painted walls create a soft, tactile atmosphere. Floors of soap-treated Douglas fir bring warmth underfoot, with offcuts recycled into skirtings and reveals. Imperfections are embraced — resin seeping from knots becomes an unplanned ornament, a reminder that the sacred can emerge from the accidental.
Sustainability here is not an afterthought but an ethos. With a verified life-cycle assessment of just 2.8 kg CO₂e/m²/year, Tolvkanten radically departs from the mineral-heavy traditions of European church construction. Its reliance on timber and biobased materials makes it both ecologically responsive and symbolically attuned to its time — a lightweight, mobile structure designed for disassembly rather than permanence. It suggests that sacred architecture need not be eternal in material to be lasting in meaning.
In Nordhavn, a district of cranes and construction dust, Tolvkanten stands as a counterpoint: an architecture that acknowledges impermanence, yet finds in it a profound sense of presence. It is at once tent and temple, industry and intimacy, a fragile icon for a city in transition.
