His architecture
The architecture of Dom Bellot is
based on harmony: The proportions of a building should be based on the sizes of
the "golden tri-angle". A building of Bellot is ment
to fit in its environment. A church should be among the people and not above.
Bellot uses materials which are often used in the country he is building: In
the Netherlands it is often brick, in France he uses also concrete and for a
project in Uganda he proposes wood!
The
exterior of Bellot’s buildings is often very simple, the interior is many times
very colourful. His target is to build the interior as beautiful as possible,
because it is the house of God. The base of his architecture is the use of
simple materials, in a way that it is worthy to be used for a church. Nothing
of the building should be camouflaged by fake structures. Everything of the
structure must be visible and useful. Dom Bellot becomes a member of L'Arche, a group of artists whose goal it is to make modern
religious art. Their symbol is the Arch of Noach. They try to use modern
materials like concrete in sacral buildings. They reject copying old religious
styles like gothic and roman styles.
In the Netherlands Bellot uses often
brick as building material, elsewhere (like France) he uses also concrete. His
only Dutch concrete church, the church of St. Teresia in Nijmegen, is
demolished in 1993.
Important
in Bellot’s churches is a free sight at the altar: That's why the pillars are
as far at the side as possible. The room at the sides is used as walking space.
The roof is supported by a series of brick or concrete arches. The arches of
Bellot are parabolic (brick) or multi-angled (concrete).
This
construction is the skeleton of the church. Everything is visible from the
inside, even the wood of the roof.
The
parabolic arch of Dom Bellot is often named a "chain arch", like the
chain arch used by the Spanish architect Gaudi. This is a wrong comparison,
because Gaudi used indeed chains to define arches. Dom Bellot did not use
chains to try, he used mathematics!
His arches
and measurements are all based on the tri-angle 31º 43" by 58º 17".
In the
picture above you can see how an arch was calculated in six steps.
The height of a pilar, the
beginning of the arche, was the key for all the measurements of the total
building. Altering one of the measurements (i.e. the length of the nave, the
height of the roof) would affect all measurements of the building: They are all
connected to each other.
Dom Bellot was building in
a modern architecture, with respect for the past. Using modern materials to
build sacral buildings. Like he said himself: Innover la tradition: continue tradition.