Can new architecture help offset the dwindling participation in organized religion and foster spirituality in everyday life? While this question has occupied the Protestant Church in Germany for some time, the recently completed Erlöserkirche (Redeemer Church), in a working-class district in north-central Cologne, provides evidence that an innovative building can indeed effect such change.

Quietly monumental, the mixed-use building still reads as a church. Photo © Roland Halbe, click to enlarge.